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My move to Newcastle was one I really regret – I should have followed my gut instincts from the start. I didn’t want to go there – my heart was still set on a return to Liverpool .

Newcastle manager Graeme Souness called me roughly every two weeks for almost the entire year I was in Spain and I can’t deny I liked the attention.

As the year wore on, he’d call me and say things like: ‘Michael, I see you didn’t start last weekend. Would you think about coming to Newcastle?’

While I don’t think I led Graeme on, with hindsight, I might have handled his first phone call differently.

(Image: Newcastle United via Getty Image)

Instead of straight-out saying: ‘If I come back to England, I’ll only be going back to Liverpool’ – which was how I felt – I think I said: ‘I’ll come back to the Premier League and I’ll look at my options when the time is right.’

If I have any regrets in my career, declaring this stance at that moment would be one of the major ones. . .

Right at the beginning of the 2005/06 season in Madrid the President, Florentino Pérez, said: ‘Newcastle has made a bid in the region of sixteen million pounds. If you want to go, then you can go. If you want to stay, you can stay.’

“But I want to go to Liverpool,” I told him. ‘That’s not possible unless they match Newcastle’s offer,’ he said.

At the time, that statement was a dagger in the heart. I was being presented with two options – neither of which I particularly fancied.

(Image: Getty Images) (Image: Newcastle United via Getty Image)

Liverpool couldn’t match Newcastle’s offer. From a career perspective, there was no doubt in my mind that a move to the North East was a downward step.

As unpalatable as that opinion might be to Newcastle fans, that’s more or less what I felt.

A fee was agreed. Meanwhile, Newcastle wanted to send their chairman Freddy Shepherd and the chief executive down in person to my house to sign the contract. Everything was moving unsettlingly fast.

I was getting increasingly cold feet about the whole idea. If I was thinking only of the money, Newcastle blew everyone out of the water. That was indisputable. They were offering me a hundred and twenty grand a week.

When they arrived at my house, I was resigned to the fact it was happening. No Newcastle fan will particularly want to hear this but, as this book is about truth, that’s the honest truth.

This, I should say, was not a reflection on Newcastle United specifically. I would have found a reason not to sign with any club that wasn’t Liverpool.

(Image: Newcastle United via Getty Image) (Image: Action Images)

The irony of all of this is that, once I actually arrived in Newcastle for the first time, all the excitement that came with being a record signing at a club with such a passionate fan base started counter-balancing my earlier reservations.

The day after signing, the club flew me up to be greeted by twenty thousand delighted fans at St. James’ Park. Instantly, I felt like a hero...

The fans never knew anything about any of the behind-the-scenes goings on which occurred during my time there but my relationship with them was damaged beyond repair when I was knocked out against Watford .

When I got home, I switched on Match Of The Day to watch the game and I could hear Newcastle fans, my fans, singing ‘what a waste of money!’ as I’m being stretchered off.

I can’t deny their actions that day changed things for me. No longer was I even going to attempt to ingratiate myself with the fans. Instead, I flipped it in a slightly more resentful way thinking, I don’t need to justify myself to f ****** Newcastle fans.

(Image: Action Images)

And I have a long memory. As much as there were some good times to follow at St. James’ Park, my relationship with the fans was irreparably impaired that day at Vicarage Road. The love affair, if you could call it that, was almost over...

Freddy Shepherd came out with the line that he would happily “carry Michael Owen back to Anfield himself”. Being a huge fan of the club also, Freddy was only doing what all the fans constantly do at almost every football club: they believe that their club is ten per cent bigger and that their team is ten per cent better than it actually is.

This kind of blind delusion is especially true of Newcastle United – which, as I reach for the nearest tin hat, is only a big club in the sense that it has a lot of fans and a big stadium.

They’re historically not successful off the pitch, in fact quite the opposite mostly. And they’ve never really won much on it in recent times.

Michael Owen: Reboot - My Life, My Time, published by Reach Sport, is on sale Thursday 5th September in hardback, ebook and audiobook.