ENGLAND have suffered a major World Cup scare after Newcastle United striker Michael Owen was forced to undergo surgery for a second time last night.

Owen, a club record £16m buy from Real Madrid last summer, has gone under the surgeon's knife again after complaining of pain in his injured metatarsal.

And, with Newcastle out of the FA Cup and destined to finish in the Premiership's mid-table, the alarming development is a bigger blow to England's World Cup plans than to club hopes.

Only yesterday morning - at the time goalkeeper Shay Given urged Newcastle to name Martin O'Neill as the new manager - caretaker boss Glenn Roeder intimated the prolific striker was on course to be back for the trip to Middlesbrough on April 9.

And now, after suffering from pain yesterday, Owen is destined for an even longer spell on the sidelines and faces a massive race to be fit for the World Cup this summer, with the squad due to be announced on May 15.

There is an insistence from the player that last night's news doesn't mean his club season is over.

Owen admitted: "The specialists have said that everything is healing fine - but to speed the process they need to tighten the screw they inserted at the time of my operation in January.

"It is a simple process and should ensure that I am back playing for Newcastle before the end of the season."

But Owen will have a lot of work to do to reach peak fitness before the finals.

He has made numerous visits to a specialist in Manchester over the past couple of weeks and the only outcome decided on was that he had another operation.

The 26-year-old has only played ten times for Newcastle since his expensive switch from the Bernabeu but has shown his potency in front of goal by scoring seven goals during that time.

Incredibly, though, he has also played five times for his country this season and is desperate to regain full fitness before the Germany finals, where he dreams of helping England to World Cup glory for only the second time.

Sven Goran Eriksson has maintained all along he would take a half-fit Owen to Germany and, with just 77 days until England's opener with Paraguay, that could prove to be the case.

But Eriksson is privately hoping there will be no repeat of the way captain David Beckham looked jaded four years ago when he went to the Japan and South Korea finals not 100 per cent.

Owen has been out of action since suffering the broken metatarsal in a collision with England keeper Paul Robinson at White Hart Lane on New Year's day.

The Owen development emerged on the same day as the Newcastle dressing room threw its weight behind making O'Neill the next permanent boss.

Newcastle's success starved squad want O'Neill to take the club forward and finally deliver the first piece of domestic silverware in more than half a century.

It has been well documented that the Northern Irishman has been earmarked by chairman Freddy Shepherd as the ideal candidate to succeed Graeme Souness on a permanent basis.

And goalkeeper Given, speaking ahead of tomorrow's trip to Charlton, has admitted O'Neill is the man the players want to see come in and transform the club's ailing fortunes.

"I would love to see him come on board. Martin did a fantastic job at Celtic.

"Even at Leicester he won a cup and who would have thought that? He has a fantastic CV, is a fantastic guy and he loves his football," said Given.

"There would be support for Martin O'Neill. I am Irish so maybe I am speaking out of turn but I would think the general consensus is that they would be very pleased if Martin O'Neill came in and took over.

"He is very passionate, he knows his stuff, he is very thorough in everything he does."

O'Neill, at 5/2, is the bookies' favourite to land the job but he is also most people's choice to take over from Eriksson as England boss when the World Cup is over.

There has been a suggestion the former Celtic manager will be in a better position to assess his future in the coming weeks when they are expecting news from the doctors about his sick wife Geraldine.

But Given, who is unlikely to commit himself to a new contract until Newcastle are showing signs of heading in the right direction, admits the dressing room is totally unaware of what the chairman's plans are.

"I do not know what is going on behind the scenes or what the chairman is doing but I am sure he is working hard to try to get someone of that (O'Neill) calibre in," he said.

"The chairman has to take his time to get it right because it is such an important thing for the whole club.

"He knows how important it is for himself. There is no mad rush. Glenn has come in and steadied the ship and if someone like Martin came in it would be very exciting."

Defeat to Chelsea in the FA Cup on Wednesday means a 51st year without domestic silverware and Given, knowing the league placing is depressing for a club of that size, does not try to hide his disappointment.

"It has obviously been a disappointing season and losing in the FA Cup leaves us with no chance of winning anything," said Given, ahead of the trip to The Valley.

"If you look at the season it has been disappointing. We felt we could have done something this season or at least got back in Europe.

"I am not saying we can't get back to Europe yet but we will have to probably win every game left to do that.

"The first thing now is to make sure the season finishes on a high so that the new man, whoever that is going to be, is picking a team that is going to be higher up the league than we are at the minute because it is not good enough where we are at in the league this year."