TRANSFER windows can slam shut quickly, as Michael Owen recognised just in time to join Newcastle United in August, but it seems that the figurative door remains open for the England forward to return to Liverpool one day. Rafael Benítez might feel that he was stating the obvious by affirming that he may be willing to bring home a player whom he sold to Real Madrid and failed to re-sign in the space of 12 months, but, with Owen returning to Anfield in a Newcastle shirt on Boxing Day, the Liverpool manager’s comments yesterday were intriguing.

“Why not?” was about the extent of Benítez’s response when asked whether he could imagine Owen playing under him for Liverpool in future.

With a devilish smile, the manager added that “he’s a good player and good players are always interesting for everyone, for every club”. He went on to explain that he would have been delighted if he had been successful in his pursuit of the forward before the August transfer deadline, but that the deal proved unworkable, with Owen instead joining Newcastle for £16.5 million, double the fee Liverpool received 12 months earlier, when the forward was in the last 12 months of his contract.

Benítez did not quite share the level of enthusiasm of the Liverpool board or indeed several of his players when it came to trying to re-sign Owen, but he maintained yesterday that, on the right terms, he would have done it.

“I tried to sign him and he knows I tried to sign him, like he said,” Benítez said. “It even went to the last day of the deadline, but in the end it was impossible for us as another club bid a large amount of money for him. There were three or four different reasons: the price, the timing, Michael’s decision and also the fact that we had very good strikers. All those things together in a short space of time made it difficult.”

It also ensured that the decision, if it could be called a decision, would subsequently be held against Benítez every time Liverpool failed to score. This happened with disturbing regularity in the opening weeks of the season, particularly as Peter Crouch struggled to make his mark in terms of goals, and, even though they have since clicked into gear in the Barclays Premiership, there remain concerns about the lack of a single dependable goalscorer in the team. Crouch, Djibril Cissé and Fernando Morientes have no more than eight league goals between them so far, just one more than Owen has managed in eight appearances for Newcastle.

Benítez made light of that statistic, saying: “Maybe we don’t have a player who can score more than 20 goals a season, but we have a lot who can score more than ten.” While there may have been times when he has rued the absence of a clinical finisher, he can point to the league table and claim that his team, after a relatively modest summer outlay, have made far greater strides this season than a Newcastle side who spent heavily on Scott Parker, Emre Belö zoglu and Alberto Luque, as well as Owen.

This is something appreciated by the Liverpool board. “Michael Owen is a great player and it was pretty obvious that, coming back to this league, he would score goals,” Rick Parry, the chief executive, said. “There’s no great surprise in that. But it wasn’t to be for us and one thing we never do is look back and wonder what might have been.”

Benítez, indeed, is looking firmly forward — and to a future that, while Newcastle may have something to say on the matter, might yet entail a permanent homecoming for one of Anfield’s favourite sons.