Owen admitted he didn't enjoy being substituted twice. They've been the only times since that Owen's been substituted for tactical reasons since Sven-Goran Eriksson took charge 5 1/2 years ago.

"Of course you do. Wouldn't you?" he said. "I've missed four months of the season ... maybe that's got something to do with it. I'm not sure.

"But as I said I'm feeling fine in training. I'm not tripping over the ball every time I get it. I'm not giving the ball away. I've had one really good chance with my head that I should have put away and that's about it."

Owen said that he knows his critics have made him the fall guy in the tradition of England strikers before him.

"It's just a nice story at the minute," he said. "But as I've said before with Gary Lineker, Alan Shearer and myself, everyone goes through patches where they don't score.

"And I don't even see this as a patch where I'm not scoring. It's not like I'm on a long drought or anything. A few games ago (in November) I didn't hardly have a touch against Argentina and then I scored twice."

England won that friendly 3-2.