NEWCASTLE UNITED boss Graeme Souness is confident Michael Owen will be fit to face local rivals Sunderland, but the England striker's injury scare has forced the 'suicidal' manager to relocate training.

The alarm bells have been ringing on Tyneside long before Owen limped out of a practice match on Tuesday with a hamstring problem, raising the prospect of the Magpies facing the Black Cats without their record signing.

Owen has become the latest in a long line of players to have suffered hamstring problems at the club and Souness believes the playing surfaces at their multi-million pound Darsley Park training base are having a negative effect.

Now the Newcastle boss has decided to move sessions during the build up to Sunday's derby date with Sunderland to the nearby youth academy.

"We will give that a go," said Souness, whose squad will train at the academy until modifications have been made to the playing surfaces. We have been training at the training ground and the academy on alternate days because some of the players have expressed the opinion that the training ground pitches are too hard.

"We will move to the academy to see if it makes a difference. We are, understandably, willing to try anything because this cannot go on."

Newcastle have already been without Emre, Kieron Dyer and Albert Luque for lengthy spells with hamstring problems, while Titus Bramble and Nolberto Solano are just two of many other Newcastle players to have been hampered by similar trouble.

So Souness, in his 13th month in charge at St James' Park, is all too familiar with the sort of inju ry Owen looks to have picked up and is hoping he does not spend weeks on the sidelines.

The 25-year-old forward also knows all about hamstring problems, having been ruled out on numerous occasions during his days with Liverpool.

And Souness, unable to pick his strongest team so far this season due to the injury situation, said: "To say I am suicidal about the current state of affairs is not far off the mark. It is very difficult to take because it is happening all the time. There never seems to be any let up. You could understand the odd strain here and there because footballers have always had those, but this is just one after another.

"We have had the worst of it at Newcastle, but I know for a fact that Arsene Wenger and Sir Alex Ferguson are tearing their hair out about it too. There seems to be no end in sight.

"While the pitches we have today look fantastic, they are not user-friendly."

Back-up striker Shola Ameobi was withdrawn from reserve team duty at St Andrews on Tuesday as a precautionary measure in case he is needed to fill the void left by the Owen on Sunday.

But Souness, who witnessed Solano and Emre both come through training sessions yesterday unscathed, is not too worried just yet.

The Scot admits Owen's situation has raised doubts over his fitness and availability for Sunday's meeting with Sunderland, but believes the former Real Madrid and Liverpool striker should recover in time.

"Michael came off the training ground on Tuesday. He has not pulled his hamstring. There is a tightness there and coming off was a precautionary measure but we are hopeful he will be OK for Sunday," said Souness.

"He did not train on Wednesday and we will have to wait to see how he is on Thursday. But we are optimistic. A hamstring is one of the areas we have to be careful with, especially with this club's record in that department."

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