Owen's Toon off key

The years are rolling by and his career in danger of rolling by too

Joe Kinnear might have persuaded his Newcastle team to finally play but he still can’t do anything for Michael Owen’s England chances.

Newcastle were 2-0 down at Goodison Park but fought back to secure a 2-2 draw. But another anonymous performance by Michael Owen means there won’t be many people trying to convince Fabio Capello to bring him back into the squad after he was dropped for the next round of internationals.

The same applies to David Bentley – and, indeed, any Tottenham player at the moment – who also misses out, although team mate Jermaine Jenas does get selected.

Capello’s squad for the forthcoming qualifiers against Kazakhstan (October 11) and Belarus (October 15) doesn’t really contain any surprises. The goalkeeper looks likely to be Portsmouth’s David James, with the usual Terry / Ferdinand / Cole plus a. n. other selection in defence.

Although if anyone can explain Lescott’s selection we’d love to hear from you.

We’ve rarely seen him do anything that justifies a place in Everton’s first team let alone the national squad.

Elsewhere it’s more business as usual.

Walcott is, of course, recalled as is Beckham (answers on a postcard…).

Downing is also called up which suggests the Middlesbrough man has compromising pictures of Fabio Capello.

Still, it’s all academic. Kazakhstan and Belarus are games England are expected to win comfortably… so they’ll all under-perform and scrape a rubbish draw.

Anyway, here's the squad: James (Portsmouth), Green (West Ham), Carson (West Brom); Brown (Manchester United), Johnson (Portsmouth), Terry (Chelsea), Ferdinand (Manchester United), Lescott (Everton), Upson (West Ham), A Cole (Chelsea), Bridge (Chelsea); Beckham (Los Angeles Galaxy), Walcott (Arsenal), Barry (Aston Villa), Jenas (Tottenham), Lampard (Chelsea), Gerrard (Liverpool), Downing (Middlesbrough), Wright-Phillips (Manchester City); Heskey (Wigan), Crouch (Portsmouth), Rooney (Manchester United), Defoe (Portsmouth).

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