Fabio Capello has once again demonstrated that he is no respecter of reputations by leaving out England’s top scorer Michael Owen for this week’s World Cup qualifiers against Kazakhstan and Belarus.

The snub has been seen in some quarters as the end of the Newcastle United striker’s international career.

When the Italian omitted Owen from his last squad for the games against Andorra and Croatia last month, the reason was given that the striker was not fit enough.

Six consecutive league games and three goals later, it is now said to be because Owen doesn’t contribute enough to the team. The first reason, I can understand; the second is just nonsensical.

How does a striker contribute best to a team performance? By scoring goals, of course, which is exactly what Owen has done throughout his career.

“A player has to do more than just score goals,” Capello said. “To not play for 89 minutes and then to score a goal is not enough.”

I find this statement amongst some of the most bizarre footballing quotes I have heard this year. Would he say that if it was a 90th-minute winner?

Isn’t that the ability, which sets the very best strikers above the rest? The talent to win a game even though they have been quiet for nearly the entire contest; that ability to settle a match with just one touch?

Owen is England’s fourth-highest scorer of all time, having hit the back of the net 40 times in 89 appearances and is a natural goalscorer. England certainly don’t have another of his like and that includes a Capello favourite, Portsmouth’s Jermain Defoe who has contributed five goals in 30 caps.

Time and again, when the chips have been down and England have needed someone to come to the fore, Owen has produced the goods. Not since Gary Lineker have England had such a reliable, natural and instinctive striker.

Even if there were doubts about his fitness, a player with that goalscoring instinct must be worth a place on the bench because when it is getting close to the wire and you need a goal, who would you turn to; Peter Crouch, Defoe, Emile Heskey or Owen? It really is a redundant question, isn’t it?

There is no doubt Owen is not the waspish striker he was when he first took the Premier League by storm as a 17-year-old at Liverpool in 1996. In those days, his lightning pace, coupled with composed finishing, was his calling card but his career soon looked in doubt as a serious of hamstring injuries nullified his main weapon and forced him to change the way he played.

The pace was no longer frightening, just a little concerning, but he adapted his game to become a six-yard box player, similar to his boyhood hero, Lineker; in addition, for a player who stands just 5ft 8ins tall, he is surprisingly strong in the air.

Despite the challenges he has faced, the goals have not dried up and he has become more comfortable in getting involved in an attacking build-up, making Capello’s assessment that he doesn’t play for 89 minutes even more bizarre.

Owen’s problem has always been staying fit and it is true that he has been blighted by more than his fair share of injuries. He is like a life-size version of the board game Operation – nearly every limb seems to have been under the knife at some stage in his career and in a way it is a miracle that he is still going at the grand old age of 28.

As fragile as a raw egg in a tumble dryer he may be, but he has never lost his goalscoring instinct and Capello would do well to remember that.

It must be said that the England coach has certainly not joined the growing group who are writing off Owen as washed up. The former Real Madrid manager proved with his handling of David Beckham that the door is never completely closed.

Becks was bombed out by the Italian when he was manager at the Bernabeu, seemingly because of his megastar lifestyle and his decision to swap La Liga for the mega-bucks of LA Galaxy.

But when everything was going wrong, he was called back into the fold and proved to be the catalyst for Madrid’s title charge. Owen could prove to be similarly influential for England.

Owen’s plight in international football is certainly not helped by the shambolic circus that is Newcastle United.

It is no wonder Newcastle are not being taken seriously. Chairman Mike Ashley tries to claim he is one of the supporters by wearing the club shirt in the directors’ box while downing pints one minute, then decides he wants to sell the club for a tidy profit; he appoints an interim manager in Joe Kinnear who has been out of the game since December 2004 and launches his tenure with a foul-mouthed press conference.

If I represented my company and conducted myself in such a manner, I know exactly what reaction I would get from my employers. It would be the same as everyone else who regards themselves as a professional.

These should be the peak years of Owen’s playing days but he is bogged down in a muddy mess in the North-east. To take his career to new heights, Owen needs to leave Newcastle. His move there has been a disaster almost from start to finish and since the departure as manager of Kevin Keegan, the one man who knew how to get the best out of Owen, his future has looked bleak.

Owen might still be one of the best strikers in the country but until he joins a more stable club and shakes off the niggling injuries that have blighted him in recent years, Capello will always have an excuse to leave him out.

Owen is finished, say the critics, but if England draw an embarrassing blank against Kazakhstan and Belarus over the next few days, stand by for the media clamour for Owen’s recall.

Things can change very quickly in the world of football.