The Cherub who replaced God

“The greatest goalscorer of all time.” – Steve McManaman

“The best player I have ever played alongside.” – Stan Collymore

I’m neither a Liverpool fan nor old enough to remember how Ian Rush might have once been thought to be irreplaceable. That doesn’t mean however that I don’t remember a young striker making his name and more in front of the Kop with Carlsberg across if not in his belly, small ears sticking out from a Bash Street Kids face and goals raining in from all angles.

Scoring on his 1993 first team debut, the first leg of a League Cup tie, wasn’t enough. He went four better in the second leg, notching every one of the game’s five goals. Deciding then that the League Cup wasn’t big enough, a first league hat-trick was mustered at only the fifth time of asking.

Twelve goals in his first thirteen games for the club. Eighteen goals in his first season to be Liverpool’s leading scorer in all competitions.

The kid was a phenomenon. Frightening. A menace. A Terror. The Toxteth Terror. For the red half, he would become ‘God’.

“Nothing had changed in my routine, except that when I went down the chippy and got me special fried rice, it would be wrapped in a newspaper that had my picture all over it.” - Robbie Fowler

Between that 1993 debut and 1997, Robbie Fowler did things most footballers could only dream of.

David Seaman and Arsenal didn’t often concede three goals in a game. In the 1994-1995 season Robbie Fowler scored three in four and a half memorable minutes.

The PFA Young Player of the Year award was his in both 1995 and 1996

Nobody else has scored more than thirty goals in each of their first three full seasons in England. Fowler bagged 98 in his, making it 116 in three and a half years. Across La Liga, Seria A and the Bundesliga, nobody has ever bettered this.

It seemed at one point Fowler was destined for great, great things and nothing was going to stop him. Any other possible future was almost unthinkable.

“It's unbelievable when you see him play to realise that he's only 17. He's such a good player, so very quick and for his age he has excellent vision and awareness. He's a great player already and in one or two years he will become a very great player.” - Karl-Heinz Riedle

I’m not a Liverpool fan but I do remember when Robbie Fowler was once thought to be irreplaceable. I also remember a cherubic little boy, looking like a Cub Scout who must have gotten into Selhurst Park for half price, somehow tucking away an unbelievably composed finish for Liverpool one night in 1997. It was Owen’s debut, made while Fowler was out injured.

Right. Nice goal kid. You can go finish your homework once Robbie’s back though. He’s the man around here.

The problem was, he didn’t get back. Not really. Not to where he’d once been. And he wasn’t the man. He may still have been God, but he wasn’t the man. Not anymore.

“I feel that every time I get the ball at the moment I am going to score.” - Michael Owen

Michael Owen had a knack of being in the right place at the right time and so it was the case when Liverpool’s first choice striker began to suffer from injuries. He took his big chance to make his name as comfortably as he took the chances that came his way on the pitch. He made people doubt whether Robbie really would be irreplaceable.

As it transpired, almost unthinkably just a year previously, those wheels of revolution were already in motion as Owen replaced Fowler as Liverpool's first choice striker in the 1997–1998 season, a season in which he shared the Premier League Golden Boot and won the PFA Young Player of the Year award, just two years after Fowler had won his last one.

Sometime during that 1997–1998 season, The Liverpool Echo wrote that: “[Owen] has become Liverpool's most precious performer and, quite simply, their saviour.”

Considering Fowler’s nickname, one has to wonder if that final Biblical reference was deliberate. An indication of a changing of the guard, if not of the God.

Scoring on that Selhurst Park debut in May 1997 had been a polite warning to the Premier League. After finishing his first full season in the Premier League as joint top scorer with 18 goals he repeated the feat the following year.

It seemed at one point Owen was destined for great, great things and nothing was going to stop him. Any other possible future was almost unthinkable.

The record books will always show that Michael Owen was Liverpool’s top goal scorer from 1997 to 2004. They will also show that his number of appearances during that time, a number that surprised this author as he researched this article, was none too shabby for someone who is now thought of as having tendons made of shortbread. Indeed, he averaged more appearances per season than Fowler himself.

What these numbers don’t mention though is the start of the problems. The strains. The niggles. The problems began early although Owen was still as fearsome, and feared, once fit again.

After returning from another spell on the treatment table, 2001 saw him win the Ballon d'Or, at the time the European Footballer of the Year award. Kevin Keegan had been the last Englishman to win this, back in 1979. God never got his hands on it.

As Owen was flourishing, God was relatively languishing. There was no shame in being second choice to an on-fire Michael Owen but being third choice behind Emile Heskey was surely borderline blasphemy. And although Fowler’s quickest ever hat trick had been good for three points six years previously, Owen struck twice in five late minutes against the same opposition in 2001 to win for Liverpool a far greater prize. The F.A. Cup.

“The treble parade would have been the most perfect moment of my footballing life, but for the two people standing behind me, clearly already plotting their next move.” - Robbie Fowler

Some (Robbie for one) say heresy was afoot behind the scenes at Anfield and inevitably, in 2001, Fowler was cast out to the barren desert of Leeds. For 12,000,000 pieces of silver.

Three years later Owen followed Robbie out of the door, but took the far more glamourous flight path to Madrid. Liverpool received £4,000,000 less than they had for Fowler.

“A new club is like having a new girlfriend; you don’t have feelings straight away.” - Michael Owen

Of course, there was life after Liverpool for both of our subjects. The sad thing is that, even when this was back at Liverpool, it was never as good.

As stated, Michael went to perhaps the biggest club in the world and Robbie went to perhaps the biggest club in Yorkshire. And Michael scored more goals. I know what you’re going to say. “He was playing with better players.” True. But he still had to be in the right place to score those goals for Real Madrid. And by in the right place, I mean in Madrid in a Real shirt, which is somewhere Robbie Fowler never found himself.

Owen’s time in Madrid was a strange one and looking back, it feels somehow odd to me that he was ever there. Not Robbie Keane/Inter Milan odd, but a little peculiar nonetheless. However, a goal every third game, more or less, is reasonable and he finished the season with the highest ratio of goals scored to number of minutes played in La Liga. Certainly, his time there was not a failure.

“In my opinion, had I been managed differently I would have been at my best for longer (as opposed to being a better player). In my case I feel I played too much, too soon.” - Michael Owen

After leaving Madrid, Michael has found himself in hospitals in Newcastle, Manchester and Stoke, taking day release occasionally to have a kickabout, most notably one Sunday afternoon in 2009 when he scored something like a 113th minute winner in a Manchester derby.

“I don't want people losing respect for me as a player. I want to go out in every game and perform to the highest level. I have no retirement plans. I've had a lot of injuries but I want to continue playing.” - Robbie Fowler

Robbie of course went from Leeds (where he did well enough to earn a place in the 2002 World Cup squad) to a still poor (in both senses) Manchester City and then back to Liverpool, where it didn’t really work, before moving on to Cardiff, Blackburn and clubs in Australia and Thailand respectively.

It sounds like there has been a downward spiral in the quality of those clubs but… Actually, let’s not pretend… look at them! It’s certainly gotten a lot less prestigious as it’s gone on.

For Robbie, Liverpool was the zenith. The biggest club he played for. For Michael, Liverpool are arguably only third on that list.

“These tournaments come round every four years and we can’t expect to win them every year.” - Michael Owen

Robbie Fowler made his England debut in March 1996, coming off the bench in a friendly against Bulgaria. Later that year, he made two appearances at Euro ’96, scoring no goals. Two years later, a knee ligament injury caused him to miss the 1998 World Cup.

Euro ’96 was brilliant, wasn’t it? What a summer. So many memories. None of which involve Robbie Fowler. I have absolutely no recollection of Robbie Fowler’s two appearances at Euro ’96 nor do I ever think about why he wasn’t at the 1998 World Cup. I do however remember Michael Owen metaphorically scaling the Arc de Triomphe, standing atop like a tall English Napoleon and announcing ‘football world… i sont arrivés.’

Owen’s performance (singular) at the 1998 World Cup was a springboard to the heights of his career. Perhaps, looking back, it was the height of his career. Although none of his other international goals were quite so memorable, he did score at Euro 2000, the 2002 World Cup and Euro 2004. What could have been big goals too. Opening the scoring in the losing quarter finals against Brazil in 2002 and Portugal in 2004, nobody could say Owen didn’t do his bit for the team.

Michael Owen remains the only player to have scored in four major tournaments for England and has actually played in five, injury unsurprisingly curtailing his involvement in the 2006 World Cup.

I had to check for Robbie Fowler’s England record. Beforehand, my abiding memory of God wearing three lions was a looping header he scored late on in a game once. The opposition escaped me, as did whether or not it was even a competitive game. Even after checking his list of appearances and goals, I’m still not sure who that was against. It really doesn’t matter. Seven goals for England, six of them in friendlies, cannot compare to Owen’s more than admirable record.

It's probably fair to say Fowler suffered rough luck during his career. Rough luck with both seriousness and timing of injuries certainly hindered his progress with both Liverpool and England.

Perhaps even more damaging for his England chances however was the quality of competition for places at the time he should have been making his impact. Shearer and Sheringham were the partnership of choice, a no-brainer at the time of Fowler’s productive early seasons. They were untouchable. Lower down the pecking order, Les Ferdinand and Ian Wright would surely be England regulars if they were around now.

LivinginItaly wrote:Fowler for me every day. More natural goalscorer. One maybe has to look critically at the Liverpool setup in that period. One prodigious talent wasted by injuries is unfortunate, but two begs the question that maybe there was more than bad luck to blame. Add the many injury problems of liverpool's other players in that period and maybe a pattern starts to form.

Back to the original post Fowler will always be a liverpool legend. Michael owen is nothing and nobody at liverpool now.