Rafa: Door still open for Owen

Liverpool manager Rafael Benitez has left the door open for Michael Owen to return to Anfield permanently one day.

The England striker, now at Newcastle, will on Boxing Day make his first appearance at Anfield since leaving to join Real Madrid in 2004.

He returned to the Premiership at the start of this season but joined Newcastle, not Liverpool, as his former club were priced out by United's £17million offer. Owen's exit from Liverpool came soon after Benitez's arrival. But the former Valencia coach insisted he had been keen to sign him this year and would still welcome him back in the future.

"Sure, why not?" he said. "He is a good player and good players are always interesting to other clubs."

Liverpool sold Owen, now 26, for a cut-price £8million plus Madrid reserve player Antonio Nunez and the Reds maintained they could not justify paying more than double that to re-capture their former golden boy.

"What is clear is that we tried to sign him and he knows we tried to sign him," said Benitez. "It is impossible if another club makes a bid of such big money. It is difficult to say we must spend that money on a player that one year before we sold for much less. "There were several reasons why it didn't happen in the summer: the price, the time, the decision of Michael and the fact that we already had good strikers at the club. All of these things together made it impossible to change the situation in such a short space of time."

"He had a good offer from a good team and he decided to go there. He is a good professional but we had to think about the club, because we already had good strikers and it was almost impossible. "I was talking with him, we tried to the end but he decided on Newcastle. We cannot change these things. "The only possibility was for him to say he didn't want to go to Newcastle. But he decide to go there, even up to the last day we tried. "I had permission from Real Madrid to talk to him and I did. But in the end he decided to go somewhere else. We couldn't do anything."

Owen had spoken out just the day before talking about the hectic few weeks leading up to the transfer deadline in the summer. "Looking back on those mad few weeks, the one thing that no one can say about me is that I was not up front and honest. I had narrowed it down to three options and, all the way through, I made it plain exactly where they stood. As I said at the time, Liverpool were my first choice, Newcastle my second. The third was staying at Real.

"I had to look after my England place and I had to look after myself. I would always prefer to be playing rather than twiddling my thumbs. The buzz from playing is irreplaceable. Every footballer wants to feel valued and I have had that in spades from the Newcastle people. "They understood why Liverpool was my first choice. I had spent more than a decade there and I did think I would be going back when I met Rick Parry and Benítez just before the transfer deadline.

"We had discussed the wages and all the nitty-gritty of a contract, so I have no doubts that their interest was genuine, whatever you may have heard. But it was difficult for them because they had sold me for £8.5million and were being asked to pay considerably more to take me back. They had to make their own financial decisions."