NEWCASTLE have spent most of this season wondering what life without Alan Shearer will be like.

This afternoon, as West Brom visit St James' Park looking to scupper their European hopes, they will finally find out. An atmosphere that should be euphoric after Monday's derby defeat of Sunderland will be tinged with despair.

Shearer has made the last competitive appearance of his career. That as much has been clear since Monday does not make confirmation of the news any easier to bear.

A preliminary scan on Wednesday proved the 35-year-old had indeed suffered medial ligament damage in a collision with Julio Arca.

A second scan yesterday afternoon confirmed the extent of the injury, which would ordinarily take between eight and 12 weeks to heal.

Nobody has come out and said it categorically, but the 35-year-old will not kick a football competitively again. He will return to St James' to assume a walk-on role in his testimonial against Celtic, but the Magpies must now plan for life without him.

"I don't know if there'll be despondency about Alan's situation hanging over (today's) game," admitted Glenn Roeder, who will not now be handing over the managerial reigns this evening after the Premier League granted him special dispensation to continue in his caretaker role until the end of the season.

"But we should also be rejoicing about having had him here for ten years. Time goes so quickly and I'm sure there will be plenty of people who saw his first game that won't believe how quickly it's gone.

"We'd like to have him back for the next ten years, but that's not going to happen.

"If Monday's game was to have been his last, he would have chosen for it to be at Sunderland and finishing in the manner it did."

Roeder was careful not to draw a permanent line under his captain's career but, at the very least, the Magpies manager has erased Shearer from his plans.

He has appointed goalkeeper Shay Given as stand-in skipper and admitted the arrangement was likely to last for the final three games because "we believe being ruled out might happen for Alan". Despite protestations to the contrary, it already has.

Michael Owen, on the other hand, is rapidly returning to the picture. The England international continues to recover from the foot injury he sustained on New Year's Eve and, after stepping up his recovery in a pleasing training session yesterday, he has been named in a 21-man squad for today's game.

He will not start it, he may well not even make the bench, but after almost four months on the sidelines, his injury nightmare is almost at an end.

Contrary to a number of reports that have surfaced this week, the striker is almost certain to make at least a substitute appearance when Newcastle travel to Birmingham next Saturday.

"It's really good news on Michael," said Roeder. "He has had some good news from his consultant surgeon and now he is able to step it up even more.

"There is every chance that, at the start of next week, he will be back training fully with us. After that, we just have to wait and see.

"He feels there is a genuine chance he could play (at Birmingham) and it would be fantastic if he did. If not, I'm sure he will have the green light for Chelsea on the final day of the season."

While Sven-Goran Eriksson has claimed he will not be taking anyone to Germany who is not fully fit, Owen will have almost five weeks in which to build up his fitness ahead of England's World Cup opener against Paraguay. At this stage, his participation in Frankfurt is not in any serious doubt.

Newcastle's European aspirations are, however, and amid all of this week's speculation surrounding their injured strikers, it has been easy to lose sight of the bigger picture.

A three-goal victory this afternoon would leave the Magpies level on points with sixth-placed Blackburn, and with an identical goal difference, a situation that looked all but impossible when Roeder replaced Graeme Souness less than three months ago.

Since then, the former West Ham boss has enjoyed nine wins from his 14 games and steered his side to the brink of a European place.

With eighth-placed Wigan having declined the opportunity to apply for the Intertoto Cup, Newcastle now look odds-on to secure a spot in UEFA's pre-season competition.

But, with Birmingham's midweek win over Blackburn having brought Rovers back to the pack, Roeder has his sights firmly set on the top-six finish that would secure automatic entry into the UEFA Cup.

"I'm sure the players realise the importance of these last three games," he said.

"If you go back to my first game in charge, if we had lost at home to Portsmouth we would have been just two points ahead of them.

"But we've taken 25 points from 12 games, so it's been a satisfying couple of months for us. We'd been travelling south before that Portsmouth game but we've been travelling north since.

"At the start of February, if you had offered our supporters the chance of going into the last three games with a chance of automatic qualification for the UEFA Cup, I'm not sure that they would have believed you.

"Now we have a chance. We could need three wins to do it, but then so might everyone else. Blackburn know they can't afford to lose a game either."

To secure three wins, though, Newcastle will have to score goals and that, inevitably, leads us back to the strikers.

With his three mainline attackers unavailable - Ameobi continues to be hampered by two broken teeth despite attempts to fit a protective gum shield to his mouth - Roeder is likely to pair Monday's supersubs - Michael Chopra and Albert Luque - from the start of today's game.

Kieron Dyer would be the only alternative but, after Amdy Faye and Lee Clark were completely over-run in the first half of Monday's derby, the England international is almost certain to line up in midfield.

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