Newcastle plan £20M offer for Real Madrid's Owen

Newcastle United boss Graeme Souness is prepared to splash out £20 million on Real Madrid striker Michael Owen at the end of this season.

Souness wants the England international as a replacement for Craig Bellamy and declared: "Owen is a player who will excite fans at this club. He's only 25 and very talented. I don't think we're the only ones monitoring the situation at Real Madrid."

"I'm after three, four or five new players in the summer. We've got lots of targets. We know what we want and I've given the details to the chairman."

"Don't think we will wait to the last day of the season to say 'Who are we going to target now?'."

"The chairman's already busy making plans for the next campaign."