Enter Owen and success, exit Freddy

The chairman's pledge

The chances can only have been improved by the acquisition for £17 million of Michael Owen, even if damp fog on the Tyne has quickly replaced so many new dawns at St James' Park down the years. Little wonder that Shepherd and his manager, Graeme Souness, were such shiny, happy people at Owen's official unveiling last Wednesday, even before stepping out on to the pitch to find 15,000 Geordies dressed in bar codes roaring their heads off behind the goal.

Three days earlier, amid a home defeat by Manchester United, the noise sounded remarkably like "Souness out" and "Sack the board". Now the manager was hearing his name chanted, and Shepherd, while not granted that privilege - there are limits to even Tyneside's generosity of spirit - knew he had pulled off a coup.

"To be honest, it's the fans who have surprised me," the chairman admitted later. "After the turn-out when Alan Shearer signed, I thought I'd never see anything like it again. But they've proved me wrong."

On the last occasion that Newcastle attempted to reward those astonishing (and astonished) supporters by signing an England striker, it was Shepherd who made the initial running: "Would you let me buy Rooney?" he asked a gob-smacked Sir Bobby Robson, suggesting that they could afford the apparently unthinkable by accepting Real Madrid's offer of £15m for Jonathan Woodgate. As is well known, the effect of making public a £20m bid to Everton was to force Manchester United into paying more than they had intended, sooner than they wished, for the boy wonder.

This time, Souness first mentioned the name of Owen as long ago as last Christmas, bringing an unseasonably obscene response from his chairman, who doubted the feasibility of the scheme. Once it became clear that there was only one other serious competitor in the market, Shepherd again made public his intention to pay top dollar, and to Owen's unconcealed disappointment Liverpool would not fall for the same trick as United and pay over the odds. It all represents a triumph for the unpopular Shepherd, who may privately regret his timing in sacking Robson after four games last season and, indeed, offered an apology when another director, Douglas Hall, said Robson would have got the team relegated.

He would not have done, of course, and had every chance of repeating the previous season's feat of recovering from the usual poor start and charging up the table from 19th place to finish fifth. Souness, with suitable irony, now faces exactly that task, backed by the chairman's money - £39m this summer - if not his unconditional support. "Every manager in the Premier League is judged by results. Graeme Souness is no different from Arsène Wenger, Alex Ferguson or Mick McCarthy, they are all judged by results at the end of the day, and I'm no different to any other chairman," Shepherd said.

"But I've got every faith in Graeme to succeed here. You don't spend a club- record fee on a player - or big money on three other world-class players this summer - on behalf of a manager you don't believe in. This isn't the time to speculate on what is or isn't going to happen to the manager, but talk of him having six games or whatever to save his job is rubbish.

"Look at the signings we've made. Nobody - and I mean nobody - has criticised any of them. Every manager and chairman I've spoken to recognises what good players we've signed. Everyone has said: 'Parker? Fantastic. Emre? Superb - Turkey's best player. Luque? Class - number three in Spain'. Owen speaks for himself. It really is the best squad we've ever had. Once we turn the corner this season, we'll be away."

As results suggest, those players have not all settled in yet. Scott Parker has made the best impression, alongside Emre Belozoglu in midfield; Albert Luque, whom Owen remembers scoring a fine goal for Deportivo La Coruña to beat Real Madrid, had a difficult debut against United and cannot now expect to be a regular starter. But Shepherd believes the foundations have been laid: "I'm excited and looking forward now, not back at the start we've made. If you live in the past, you die in the past. The season starts now. It's got to be a top-six finish and a trophy. Why not? We came close enough by getting to a semi-final and a quarter-final last season - which most clubs would have killed for. We always seem to get a bad start, and have recovered well before. We've had to play against two of the top teams [Arsenal and United] already and can now look forward with confidence."

In moving on 10 players, meanwhile, he insists Newcastle have improved their discipline and image. "I'm not going to hide the fact that we did have problems off the field with certain players. It wasn't that they were bad guys, more like rascals - and easily led. But those guys have now gone. We've now got a solid and stable set of lads, and you can imagine those types of players are jumping through hoops now that we've got Michael Owen, who is as good an ambassador for the game as you'll find."

As the banner in that packed stand on Wednesday read: "The Owen way is up." The man himself, who has genuinely missed Premiership football, should also be capable of putting aside understandable disappointment at not returning to his first club and his home in north Wales. Older (though still only 25) and wiser, he can make a better go of working alongside Shearer than when they were England colleagues, with mixed success, from 1998 to 2000 - as long as the service from Newcastle's revamped midfield improves.

Just for the record, Owen would also like it to be known that he should not go down as one of those failed Englishmen abroad: "It was a great experience and I had a good time. There wasn't any player in the Real Madrid team that played more games than me and I scored plenty of goals while I was at it. I went over and saw it and did it, and in my eyes I did bloody well."