Alan Shearer has only 180 minutes left to prove he's fit to face Manchester United in Newcastle's Premiership opener.

The striker has seen only 20 minutes of action in Newcastle's pre-season games because of a knee injury.

But a scan has shown no serious damage and Shearer hopes to prove his fitness at Feyenoord tomorrow night.

Manager Bobby Robson will decide whether to involve his skipper after an intense training session this morning.

If he is ruled out again, Shearer will have only next week's match against Espanol to show he's sharp enough to play at Old Trafford.

He said yesterday: "All I need to be ready for Manchester United is a full game or a game and a half.

"I'm not too short of match fitness because I didn't stop playing until June 20 with England."

The 29-year-old has missed the club's last two friendlies with a recurrence of the tendinitis he suffered during Euro 2000.

Now Shearer, who scored 30 goals last season after putting a barren start firmly behind him, is desperate to prove his fitness in time for the trip to Old Trafford a fortnight on Sunday.

''The scan has shown that the knee is no worse than when I was scanned by England during the European Championships,'' he said.

''I'll give it a blast in training to see if I can play part of the game against Feyenoord.

''If not then I'll be back in training on Monday. Pre-season matches don't matter apart from getting players ready for the important stuff.''

Shearer returned to training a couple of days before Newcastle jetted off to the United States for a ten-day trip, but the knee problem meant he was able to play only a few minutes as a substitute in the 3-1 defeat by Washington DC United.

In his absence new signing Carl Cort has done himself no harm with an early justification of the £7m Robson invested in him, scoring three times in as many games.

Argentinian Daniel Cordone has also impressed, and with Shearer and Duncan Ferguson nearing fitness the manager could have a formidable striking line-up from which to choose on August 20.

It was the Shearer-Ferguson partnership which undid United at St James's Park on February 12, when they exacted full revenge for their 5-1 drubbing in Manchester at the end of last August by claiming all the goals in a 3-0 victory