My pathetic Michael Owen conspiracy theory...

So, Mikey's injured. Or is he? He's come under fire for under-achieving and had to defend himself post the Trinidad & Tobago game and, rather than put his hands up about his lack of sharpness in the box and general movement around the pitch, bemoaned the lack of service. Swen from Sveden didn't really defend little Mikey, which upset little Mikey. So, we comes to the game and little Mikey's one of the few players in the pre-match national anthemathon to not look really up for it. He's got things on his mind. "I'm gonna show 'em," thinks little Mikey, "for blaming me, for even daring to think that they could carry on without me. I mean, Peter Crouch, the long, gangly streak of..." etc etc. So he is going to show them, by feigning some kind of injury at the earliest opportunity. Which, of course, came within the first minute of the game v Sveden. There he was, on the stretcher, acting all poorly-like, while running through his minds he's thunking, "right, let's see how you do without me now". Of course, like all conspiracy theories, it's a big pile of droppings. But there might be something in it.