for a reasonable arguement as to why Heskey has and should be included

User Posted Link

"It makes me feel a little dirty (and not in a good way) to agree with Steve McClaren and Chris Hutchings but I do believe that Emile Heskey is the best available partner for Michael Owen this Saturday and I applaud the England manager's bravery in handing him a recall.

Heskey is a figure of fun amongst pretty much everyone but the managers who sign him and, crucially, the footballers who play alongside him. He is Michael Owen's favourite strike partner for a reason - he scores more goals playing alongside him than anyone else.

Between 2000 and 2004, Owen scored 70 Premiership goals in 121 games for Liverpool. This was by far the most prolific period of Owen's career. He has not forgotten that the vast majority of those games saw him play alongside Heskey, and neither has McClaren.

There was a reason why Heskey and Owen was the strike partnership of choice for England even when other English strikers were outscoring Heskey - because it worked as a partnership. This was the partnership that helped beat Germany 5-1, this was the partnership that got England to the World Cup quarter-finals.

Yes, that was five years ago but Owen still names Heskey as the player he wants to partner him at Wembley. He knows he needs a big man to be at his best and it's no coincidence that he has scored goals in the last week for Newcastle while Shola Ameobi was his strike partner.

The alternatives are Jermain Defoe, Andy Johnson and Alan Smith - all shortarses, with five England goals between them and no goals in the Premier League at all this season.

Nobody could argue that Heskey is one of the best 11 players in England at the moment, but only the narrow-minded can fail to see the argument that he is the best man for this particular job at this particular time.

If you were an Israeli defender, who would you be most worried about facing on Saturday...Alan Smith or Emile Heskey? Just like Peter Crouch - similarly dismissed by the lazy - Heskey presents a challenge to a defence that a partnership of Owen and Smith or Johnson could never offer. He immediately takes away the biggest, strongest defender to give Owen more room.

He is also one of only six England strikers to score in the Premier League this season. Owen is another. The remaining four are the injured Darren Bent, the completely untested Matt Derbyshire and the in-no-way-should-they-ever-be-considered-for-England pairing of Cameron Jerome and Michael Chopra.

Heskey is a fit first-choice English striker at a top-half Premier League club. And he is playing well. That makes him a very rare animal indeed. And, most importantly, one of the other rare animals specifically requested to play alongside him. If it wasn't Emile Heskey, and people didn't have lazy prejudices, it would be a no-brainer."

Posted By: blindasabat, Sep 4, 10:48:26