Manchester United have scored by far the most goals in the Barclays Premiership this season but could still do with a reliable poacher. Only Dirk Kuyt, of Liverpool’s quartet of forwards, can be sure of being at Anfield in August. And then there are the misfiring Andriy Shevchenko and Salomon Kalou at Stamford Bridge.

Replenishing their attacking resources will be at the forefront of the minds of the leading managers and one name will surely figure alongside Fernando Torres, David Villa and Jermain Defoe as the top clubs balance needs with budgets. At 27, Michael Owen is by far and away his country’s leading scorer and, because of unusual circumstances, is available for less than £10 million.

Sir Alex Ferguson and Rafael Benítez could spend a long time scouring the transfer market before they will find a striker with a career ratio of 0.51 goals per game for that sort of money. And, as a pained Steve McClaren will tell you after England’s struggles in front of goal, a big-match temperament is priceless.

Having been ruled out for most of this season with a serious knee injury, Owen insists that he is back stronger than ever and those close to him can detect a renewed appetite for football. Removing him from action for ten months has relit his competitive fires, although his delight at returning has quickly been tested by two defeats for Newcastle United.

There is an argument that Owen has to stay at Newcastle and drag them up the league to repay a debt that comes from having played only 13 times in two injury-ravaged seasons. It is an argument that might hold water if Tottenham Hotspur or Sunderland were bidding, but could Owen seriously be expected to turn down United or Liverpool and the chance to compete for the title and to play in the Champions League?

He has spoken many times about the guilt that he feels towards the club who rescued him from an unhappy year at Real Madrid, but when they outbid Liverpool by £5 million two years ago, Newcastle knew that they were batting far above their station. It is why they had to put release clauses in his contract and to make him the highest-paid Englishman in the Premiership on more than £110,000 a week.

They did so knowing that, for the clauses not to be triggered, they would have to be competing at the top end of the table and to have become a ride worth staying on. Having just removed the second manager in Owen’s time with the departure of Glenn Roeder, they have hardly kept up their side of the deal. Newcastle have suffered terrible luck with Owen’s injury, among others, but the club remain a byword for instability and chronic underachievement.

It is a situation ripe for predators, particularly if the encouraging signs of Owen’s first two comeback matches – the robust challenges, the clever runs, even the frustration at the missed chances – are repeated away to Watford on Sunday and in England’s matches against Albania, Brazil and Estonia, in which he will hope to score his first goal since June last year.

If the top clubs decide to pursue other targets, the new manager at St James’ Park (ie, Sam Allardyce) will be lucky beyond his dreams when he inherits a forward with 36 goals in 80 games for England and whose worth has only been enhanced in his long absence. But the new manager should know that it is beyond his control and beyond Newcastle’s. It is down now to Ferguson and Benítez.

Ronaldo blow for marketing machine

Just as the title party started in Manchester on Sunday night, two exiles from Old Trafford were too busy to pine for what might have been. David Beckham and Ruud van Nistelrooy have had plenty of reasons to look back at their former United teammates with envy, but they had their own big match for Real Madrid. Both were important figures in the 3-2 victory over Seville that marked a sixth win in seven matches for Fabio Capello’s team.

Real are only two points behind Barcelona, the leaders, and, after yet another season of turmoil, have a chance of sending Beckham off to the United States with his first medal after four difficult seasons.

Only the hardest of hearts would begrudge the former England captain a victorious finale, but the mistake would be to think that a championship would mark a transformation in Real’s fortunes. A great institution is still run by the marketing department. A reminder of that came with Real’s recent attempts to drag Beckham on a ludicrous postseason tour to the US and to squeeze every last drop of publicity out of him before he heads to Los Angeles Galaxy.

The football club will reemerge one day, but, as José Antonio Reyes has been the latest to discover, the Bernabéu can be a graveyard of reputations and Cristiano Ronaldo showed more wisdom than José Mourinho gives him credit for in turning down a lucrative offer from Real. There will be a time to pull on the dazzling white shirt, but not this summer – not even if they finish top of La Liga.

Villa players braced for change as O’Neill gets down to business

Aston Villa will finish tenth or eleventh in the Premiership this season and whichever side they fall of halfway, it will fuel Martin O’Neill’s belief that the club must do better next season. And they will do far better, or I am David O’Leary.

Hopes were high that brilliant manager and committed new American owner might achieve more in their first season, but it has not been easy turning around a club who were dying of boredom. Villa’s past few years almost make Newcastle United look like a success story.

O’Neill arrived late last summer and had to muddle through with the players he inherited, but the squad members might want to brace themselves for change. O’Neill is ambitious and, according to friends, wants to put himself in a position where the FA will not need an interview process the next time it is searching for an England manager. A sleeping giant is about to stir in the Midlands.

— So now we know. It is against FA Premier League rules to write down that Tim Howard cannot play for Everton against Manchester United, but it is fine and dandy if the deal is done on the basis of David Moyes’s nod and Sir Alex Ferguson’s wink. It was bad enough when Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington’s interim bungs report revealed that several clubs did not know the transfer regulations. Now, along with West Ham United’s irregular contract with Carlos Tévez and Javier Mascherano, we have another example of clubs simply pretending that rules do not exist.