Michael Owen turns 30 tomorrow – a worrying landmark for any footballer, despite the example of the Peter Pan they call Ryan Giggs. It is certainly not an age when a World Cup hopeful wants to be on the bench for his club while younger, ambitious rivals press their claims for international selection.
Conventional wisdom holds that it is Wayne Rooney and Jermain Defoe who will keep Owen out of Fabio Capello's squad to travel to South Africa next summer, but last night, while he kicked nothing more rewarding than his feet for 45 minutes as a Manchester United substitute, Owen saw another compelling challenger join the list.
The goal Gabriel Agbonlaor buried for Aston Villa after 20 minutes was his eighth in 16 Premier League appearances this season, and those who still doubt whether he can be effective against top-quality opposition should bear in mind that he has now scored against United in each of the past four seasons. The Villans' hero could well be timing his World Cup run to perfection.
Owen had hoped to start last night, after his hat-trick against Wolfsburg in midweek. Instead, Sir Alex Ferguson opted to play with Rooney as a lone striker, with Owen and Dimitar Berbatov on the bench throughout the first half, after which, in extremis, Owen was sent on in place of Ryan Giggs and Berbatov took over from Park Ji-sung.
It was not until the second half, therefore, that there was a renewal of old acquaintance between Owen and Emile Heskey, who were England's strikers at the 2002 tournament, in Japan. Seven years ago, you could have had stratospheric odds against Heskey still being in situ come 2010, while Owen was deemed a spent force at international level. But the target man they used to call "Bruno" is Capello's preference as he contemplates his squad for South Africa.
The two players are chalk and cheese, of course, and comparing them is akin to weighing a Jaguar against a Range Rover. Both can motor and get the job done, but we are talking about very different sorts of performance.
After his Champions League exploits last Tuesday, a media bandwagon is starting to roll for Owen again, but if the arch predator is to persuade a sceptical Capello to give him the chance to add to his 40 international goals, he needs to be playing, and scoring regularly at club level. To his understandable frustration, he has started only three Premier League matches this season.
Heskey, in contrast, has been an automatic selection under Capello, and can confidently expect to add to his 56 caps, despite the fact that they have brought just seven international goals. For a long time he has been a starter for England, but only a substitute for Villa, where the manager, Martin O'Neill, preferred John Carew. For the past three games, however, Heskey has been in the original line-up. The leopard, though, will not change his spots. Thirty-two next month, Heskey is not about to become a latter-day Jimmy Greaves overnight, and 21 appearances for club and country this season have brought him just two goals.
Midway through the second half, typically, he shot tantalisingly wide from right to left – the story of his career – and after 73 minutes of honest toil but precious little by way of threat to Tomasz Kuszczak in the United goal, he gave way to Carew.
Can England afford to allocate one of the key striking positions to such a blunt instrument? Capello clearly thinks so. Against United, as is his wont, Heskey did his best work linking the play in midfield, and was content to leave it to a pair of much younger England wannabes, Ashley Young and Agbonlahor, to plunder United's below-strength defence for the all-important first goal, which saw Young outmanoeuvre the stand-in right-back, Darren Fletcher, with ease.
In the second half, with Owen partnering Rooney, there were echoes of another international tournament, the 2004 European Championship, which could have had a much more positive outcome for Sven-Goran Eriksson and his team but for the broken metatarsal that put Rooney out for the duration after Owen had given England the lead against Portugal. The two of them were bright and lively in combination here, but Villa defended assiduously to keep them at bay.
It never looked like being United's night, nor this time was it Michael Owen's. Young Gabriel, on the other hand, left with a huge smile on that angelic face.