Cold War on Tyneside: Owen and Shearer’s Feud Still Frosty Years On

Some football fall-outs cool with time. This one’s still piping hot. Michael Owen and Alan Shearer — once England’s poster-boy strike duo and briefly manager-player at Newcastle — remain on opposite sides of a very frosty divide. By Owen’s own admission and Shearer’s pointed replies, they haven’t spoken since their 2019 social media spat, and there’s precious little evidence of a thaw.

From team-mates to tense rivals

Let’s get the lay of the land. Shearer is Tyneside’s all-time talisman — Newcastle’s greatest player and the Premier League’s record marksman. His reputation among the Geordie faithful is iron-clad. Owen? That’s trickier. He arrived from Real Madrid in 2005 for big money and bigger expectations, but injuries and mixed messaging meant he never truly clicked with the St James’ Park crowd. Thirty goals in 79 appearances is no disgrace, yet the romance never materialised — not helped by his long-standing desire to return to Liverpool.

When that Anfield homecoming didn’t happen, Owen went the other way entirely, to Manchester United in 2009, inheriting Cristiano Ronaldo’s famous No 7. All of that came on the heels of a grim climax on Tyneside: Newcastle’s relegation at Villa Park in May 2009, with Shearer in the dugout for a brief, doomed rescue mission.

The flashpoint: Villa Park, 2009

This is where the wound opened up. Newcastle needed a result at Aston Villa to stay up. Shearer wanted his star striker from the off; Owen told him he wasn’t fully fit for 90 minutes and suggested he’d be more effective from the bench. He duly came on for the final stretch, but a 1-0 defeat sent the Magpies down. Shearer would never manage again. The narrative calcified quickly: some in the Toon army felt Owen had bottled it; Owen insists he was being honest and professional about his fitness and availability.

Years later, Owen laid out his side of the story on the airwaves, saying he was willing to do whatever Shearer needed but was made the fall guy when the drop came. That accusation of being scapegoated is the line that still stings on Tyneside — and clearly still grates with Shearer.

The book that poured petrol on the fire

As if the debate needed more heat, Owen’s 2019 autobiography provided it. He admitted he regretted joining Newcastle — calling it, from a career perspective, a step down — and described the relationship with fans souring after early injuries and criticism. The nuance won’t have landed amid the noise; what stuck was the sentiment that he’d never fully bought in. For a club that worships commitment, that was dynamite.

Twitter crossfire: wages, loyalty, and pointed jabs

Then came the infamous social media skirmish. Shearer clipped up Owen’s remark about falling out of love with football in his later years and fired back with a not-so-subtle reminder of the sizeable wages Owen earned during that period. Owen countered by questioning Shearer’s own loyalty, suggesting the club icon had once weighed up a move to Liverpool after being benched by Sir Bobby Robson. Classic Twitter: sharp elbows, no middle ground.

Still no handshake

In 2021, Owen said publicly that he and Shearer still hadn’t patched things up. He spoke warmly about their old friendship — he lived in Shearer’s house after signing and they were regular golf partners — but maintained that Shearer had unfairly pinned part of Newcastle’s relegation on him. His view is simple: managers rarely blame themselves, and Shearer is no different. The respect is there, says Owen, but so is the stalemate.

From Shearer’s side, the silence says plenty. He has never needed to win a popularity contest on Tyneside — he won it years ago. His brief stint in management didn’t work, true, but his standing as a player is untouchable. Owen, by contrast, has long been swimming against a fierce current in the North East, and his own words — however candid he felt they were — have only made the river choppier.

The bigger picture

Strip it back and you’ve got two proud men with competing truths about a desperate moment in a club’s history. For Newcastle, 2009 was calamity; for Shearer and Owen, it became personal. Does either side look likely to budge? Not a chance. If they ever do meet, you can imagine the ritual: handshake, stare, polite stalemate. Until then, the cold war rumbles on.

If you fancy a flutter on where the next great Premier League narrative twist will come from, check out our best betting sites and keep your eye on the odds.

Pundit’s verdict

Here’s the truth of it: Shearer is bulletproof in black-and-white folklore; Owen is not. That doesn’t make him a villain, but it explains why the debate keeps circling back to commitment and connection. One man embodied the club. The other never quite felt part of it. Until we see both sharing a studio couch with smiles rather than side-eyes, expect this saga to simmer rather than explode.