Newcastle chairman: We'll do everything to sign Real Madrid's Owen

Newcastle chairman Freddy Shepherd has insisted the club is willing to try everything to bring Michael Owen of Real Madrid to St James' Park.

"It would be a nice thing to happen to get Michael here," Shepherd stated. "But we can't talk about players who are at other clubs, we don't do that here, we play by the rules."

"In today's prices we've saved ourselves more than £25 million by persuading Alan to stay on."

"If we hadn't we'd have had to go out and replace him. "We'll be bringing in a striker in the summer but now we need to look at one rather than two. It's a fact that he needs to be a top striker."