STEVEN GERRARD, the Liverpool captain, believes Michael Owen could make a shock return to Anfield at the end of the season. There is a clause in the Newcastle United forward’s contract that allows him to leave the club for £12m in the summer and Gerrard is urging Liverpool to buy a new striker in the wake of their elimination from the Champions League last week.

Gerrard, in an exclusive interview with The Sunday Times, says a penalty area “poacher” is needed if an improving team is to achieve its potential, and that re-signing Owen last summer would have been the ideal answer. The England forward instead moved to Newcastle from Real Madrid for £17m.

“I know Michael Owen wanted to come here,” said Gerrard. “I’ve got a good enough relationship with him to know that. That he didn’t was down to Liverpool not making it happen, rather than Michael not wanting to come.

“It’s difficult for me to say what difference he might have made the other night, but Michael Owen scores goals. Domestically, in Europe and at international level he has proved that. Someone asked me after Wednesday’s game if I’d like him back, and it’s a silly question . . . Of course I’d love to have him back.”

Liverpool have scored only eight times in their past 13 matches, with their strikers managing just two goals this year. “Statistics don’t lie,” said Gerrard. “I’m not going to disguise the fact that we need a poacher. The problem we’ve got is obvious. Sometimes you lose games and you can’t put your finger on what’s going wrong, but in this case we know what it is — it’s there for everyone to see.”

Against Benfica in midweek, manager Rafael Benitez used four centre-forwards during the course of the game, but none of them looked like translating possession into goals, and the European champions were dethroned on a 3-0 aggregate. Peter Crouch wasted the best chance of the match, prodding the ball weakly at the goalkeeper in a one-on-one situation. Gerrard said of his England teammate: “Peter has never been prolific, and I don’t think he’s ever going to be. He’s a target man, you’ll only get the maximum out of him if you play him alongside a prolific striker, and we haven’t got one at the moment.”

Owen scored 158 goals in his seven years with Liverpool, but despite playing a leading role in the winning of three domestic cups, the Uefa Cup, five top four finishes and two Champions League campaigns, the Cheshire-born forward was never taken to supporters’ hearts in the same way as Gerrard, from Huyton, and Jamie Carragher, raised in Bootle, who are idolised as “local” heroes.

Gerrard expressed his sorrow at Owen’s treatment at Christmas, when he was jeered by the Kop on his return as a Newcastle player, but his main concern now is where Liverpool’s goals are going to come from. Gerrard, a midfielder, is the club’s leading scorer in the Premier League with seven.

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