No wonder. The striker looks a shadow of the player who left Anfield almost five years ago.

Owen was barracked on his previous couple of visits to Liverpool with Newcastle United, but this time, sensing he was at an even lower ebb than normal, they warmly applauded the striker as he warmed up.

Of course, by the time Owen belatedly got on to the pitch, the game was a lost cause, not that he'd have been able to change the course of the match had he been on from the first whistle.

And just what role he will play in the three remaining games is open to question, with his manager Alan Shearer clearly feeling he's far from his best right now, just when the club need him most.

Shearer's decision to drop his former England and Newcastle strike partner was the pre-match talking point, with the 29-year-old paying the price for a barren few months in front of goal.

However, it was a Liverpudlian, though not wearing the red of Liverpool, who ended the day in the headlines, and not for the right reasons.

United's medical staff have worked hard in recent months to get Joey Barton back on the field, such is the impact the 26-year-old is capable of having on Newcastle's relegation battle.

They needn't have bothered. Barton, due to his own sheer stupidity, won't be playing any part in Newcastle's final three games.

Barton has had enough second chances in his career for misdemeanours on and off the field.

But Shearer, having had his faith in the errant midfielder thrown back in his face, didn't look or sound like a man willing to give Barton another one for his brainless challenge on Xabi Alonso 13 minutes from time with United trailing 2-0.

Alonso, with the ball at the corner flag, was going nowhere, yet Barton felt it necessary to scythe through the back of him with a dreadful two-footed challenge.

And the man who is paid a reported £64,000-a-week, and replaced the model professional Scott Parker at St James's Park at Sam Allardyce's behest, couldn't even be bothered to apologise to fans after the game, shunning interview requests as he shamefacedly slipped out of Anfield, his career having hit another low.

The game might have been over by the time he felled Alonso, but Newcastle's relegation battle wasn't, and it might well prove his last inglorious act in a black and white shirt.

Arguably, the scoreline should have been 6-0 by the time referee Phil Dowd put United out of their misery, though Newcastle were rightly aggrieved at Yossi Benayoun's opener, which was marginally offside.

And as Newcastle, without a win at Anfield since 1994, know to their cost, once you go a goal behind at Liverpool, you rarely come back.

However, unlike Barton's season, and possibly United career, the club's fight against relegation isn't over, though it surely will be if they fail to beat Middlesbrough a week today.