Like a damsel in distress, Michael Owen needs a knight on a white charger to save him. Admittedly, this is not a statement that immediately conjures a mental image of Emile Heskey on horseback, but there you go. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.

If Owen’s international career is to be revived, he needs Heskey to be fit and available. Fabio Capello, the England manager, sees them as a team but has doubts over Owen as an individual. For the player once styled as the nation’s talisman, some lonely nights studying the back of Stuart Pearce’s head are looming.

If Owen can take a crumb of comfort from the first match of Capello’s reign, it is that this appeared to be an England team picked on form. The manager would not have paid much attention to the Barclays Premier League before December and has responded largely to what he has seen on scouting missions since last month, which, in Owen’s case, has been some ordinary performances in a Newcastle United shirt. The bad news is that if Capello’s way forward is to play a variance of 4-5-1 at home to Switzerland in a friendly, Owen will not be a potential starter – or even a substitute – in any match that matters.

The word from Capello’s camp is that Owen is not seen as a complete player but as half of a unit, like the little bricks of four that are put in Lego sets, the whole being his partnership with Heskey. The Italians as good as invented the statistical analysis of football and Capello cannot help but respect what Owen achieves in an England shirt with Heskey by his side: a goal every 82 minutes and 15 seconds. Owen cannot afford to be anything less than prolific, mind you, because Heskey’s scoring record is dismal – five goals in 45 appearances.

The suggestion is that Owen nearly failed to make Capello’s final cut, squeaking into the squad of 30 in the manner of the last man on a crowded Tube carriage: sideways, with his briefcase shut in the closing doors.

Rumours last week had Owen as a high-profile casualty alongside David Beckham, but it appears that there was a last-minute reprieve when the realisation arose that England’s cupboard was bare of strikers. The potency of the Owen-Heskey partnership has been acknowledged since they played together for the England under18 team and this persuaded Capello to go with Owen in the hope of reigniting the spark.

Now it gets interesting. On Tuesday, when Capello claimed that he always played 4-4-2, he said that he occasionally switched to 4-3-1-2. Could this have been plan B for England’s first match: Owen and Heskey up front, Wayne Rooney behind and a tight midfield three of Jermaine Jenas, Gareth Barry and Steven Gerrard? Then, when Heskey was injured on Saturday, did Owen become surplus to requirements, too? He remained in the squad because of a shortage of numbers, with Gabriel Agbonlahor also withdrawing, but was no longer in Capello’s thoughts from that moment.

Had the manager been interested in 4-3-1-2, he could have pitched Owen and Peter Crouch together with Rooney behind, because Owen’s record with Crouch is equally impressive. That Capello did not suggests that he sees Owen in strictly limited terms and despite the Italian’s protestations that he is single-mindedly interested in what a player can do for England, not his club, only a revival in Owen’s form for Newcastle can provoke a change of heart. Either that or he needs to agitate for a move to Wigan Athletic in the hope of giving Capello’s memory a nudge.

“Owen was with us, so that means he is part of the group,” Capello said. “I don’t know what will happen in the future, but I know him very well, so I am interested in seeing other players and how well they do. I know he is a big player, but all 23 start at the same level in my thinking. There is nothing personal about it. I do not make choices because I like or dislike people. What we did as a team is more important than Owen, or any single player.”

No argument with that and, even if there were, Capello would not care. As Slaven Bilic, the Croatia coach, said, England is not Capello’s country, which makes decisions easier. An English manager would have iconic memories of Owen in an England shirt dancing in his head as he left his name off the teamsheet. Capello merely had an impression of what he looked like without Heskey. Half the talent, apparently.

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• Graham Spiers