James Lawton: Owen deserves better than to run the gauntlet of any loyalty test to Liverpool

Having signed away the prime of his own football life, Steven Gerrard is now urging the same course of action upon his Liverpool and England team-mate Michael Owen. "I've spoken to him about it several times recently," Gerrard blithely told a Sky television audience this week. No doubt his motives were innocent enough, but if anyone deserved the freedom to make a relatively pressure-free decision about his future you might have thought it was Owen.

Yes, Owen, and who might be more entitled than the kid who, despite performing so relentlessly from the age of 17, was being written off by so many as he came to his 21st birthday?

He has ridden fears of burn-out, nagging injuries. a "rotation" system that sometimes brought him near to despair, a system of play which so frequently failed his unique scoring gifts, and, not so long ago, a fevered onslaught on his liking for a flutter on the horses which had become a serious professional interest. He might have fancied that he had earned an unchallenged right to chart - like the majority of the rest of us - the course for the rest of his life according to the privileges of a free society. That hope is surely jettisoned now in what seems certain to be a gauntlet run all the way to the end - or the renewal - of his Anfield contract.

Gerrard's was maybe not the most helpful intrusion into the latest controversy building around a head which has always been wisely kept below the parapet in all but the vital business of playing the game with impeccable honesty and quite phenomenal consistency.

Certainly, you could see how it would play in the Anfield stands. Gerrard has sailed through his loyalty test; now Owen faces months of questioning, in some cases by people who should know better, about the exact hue of his blood. If you cut him, does he bleed the red of Liverpool?

Only in football could such a question be asked with a straight face and without provoking a charge of emotional gibberish. Where else are former employees who have fulfilled their terms of employment with loyalty and excellent performance, and thus earned the chance to better themselves, so universally reviled if they decide to elect themselves to a new horizon?

It is a question that has been at the forefront of the mind of Owen's agent, Jon Holmes, for some days now. He has watched with growing horror the surge of pressure on his client, which has indeed included growls from some Liverpool's supporters that their erstwhile hero might be on the look-out for his version of 30 pieces of silver.

Holmes' angst is that the catalyst of the agitation was a recent interview in which he was asked about Owen's situation. He said it was a big year for Owen, that with his contract coming up in 18 months' time the player obviously had to make some decisions about his future. Yes, Owen plainly would not relish another season away from the challenge and stimulation of Champions' League football.

The impossible trick here was to spot even a hint of some provocative, destabilising lunge of early negotiation. Nothing Holmes said departed from long and universally received wisdom. Owen has a decision to make; in the same way that the most fervent Liverpool fan would if he was presented with a whole new range of employment options. Perhaps the most surreal moment of the week's debate came when the Liverpool manager, Gérard Houllier, said that if Owen had avoided injury the club would be a lot closer to the European qualification which everybody craves. It's also true that if Harold hadn't taken an arrow in the eye his Norman relation William would not have been a conqueror.

In this situation the onus is surely on Liverpool to persuade Owen that his future will indeed be best served by playing for a team who reside just a short drive from his family enclave across the Welsh border.

Owen's achievements for Liverpool put him beyond any loyalty test set by Houllier, Gerrard or a host of noisy fans. The fact is that a player's career is short and in today's game he has one over-riding obligation. It is to perform the best he can on the field and faithfully fulfil the terms of his contract. The idea of Owen dragging his feet, of playing not to the limit of his ability but to get away, is unthinkable. But then, in this age of Bosman and so much under-achievement by hugely reward "stars", so is the idea of his being shackled for the rest of his career to a club plainly unable to provide an adequate platform for his talent.

It will certainly take more than the midweek victory over stuttering Chelsea to convince any serious judge of the game that Liverpool have put behind them the last few years of dispiriting sterility.

Houllier, alarmed by the suggestion of his faithful backer, chairman David Moores, that he might have to stand down if results do not improve, made an impassioned plea for "continuity" this week. But continuity of what? Continuity of a growing sense that under their present management Liverpool have gone as far down the road as they can? Houllier would, of course, argue for that continuity, as much as his supporters would want to see all his superb groundwork of discipline and values translated into coherent, progressive football - the kind in which Owen's special talent would surely enjoy a blossoming maturity.

But is Owen, faced with more alluring and immediate prospects of playing at the top of the club game, really expected to simply hang on and hope. His talent carries more certainty than that. Liverpool have to do more than offer him a pay rise and a bunch of platitudes. What, then, might it take? Perhaps the hardest evidence that they really do have the will to compete with Manchester United and Arsenal. Maybe they have to appoint Martin O'Neill.