Footballer-turned-commentator Michael Owen once mused, "When they don't score they hardly ever win." With wisdom like that, it's no surprise he's our latest inductee to The Cult. You can (in fact you must) read our previous entries here.

Here's a fun little game for you: try to guess which of these quotes are from Michael Owen's co-commentary work, and which ones are made up. #1: 'I'd liken Dele Alli to some of the great US Vice-Presidents of history, Walter Mondale especially, with the way he provided the assist there and allowed Kane to take all the glory.'_ #2: 'There might be a war in Syria at the moment, but it's all about peace and harmony within this Leicester City side.' #3: '_He's either got to pick power or accuracy there.'

In truth, I have no idea if he did or didn't say any of them; if life is too short for anything, it is typing 'things Michael Owen has said' into Google.

Honestly, with that flat Cheshire burr playing in my brain, I'm struggling to think of any words to emphasise quite the handful of magic beans Owen once seemed to England fans. Throw him on against Romania at France 98 – bam! Set him loose against Argentina, or Germany in their own backyard, or Brazil in the 2002 World Cup quarter-final – WHAM! The brief aftermaths of the goals against both Argentina and Brazil, before England contrived to lose those matches, were the apex of giddy joy for any England fan born too late for Italia 90, and there has been nothing since. Nothing.

What is sometimes overlooked – although not by him, you sense, for that sour drift in his voice must come from somewhere – is what a little molehill of dissatisfaction his career subsequently became. As I've got a bit older and had the questionable fortune of seeing Twitter do the exact opposite, I've learnt to have some perspective. Anyone making it as a Premier League footballer has succeeded, including Titus Bramble, Robbie Savage and Mart Poom. Anyone who has been anywhere near a title-winning side – not to mention central to a team that has won trophies, not to mention been deemed worthy of a move to Real Madrid, not to mention a host of international caps and goals, and the Ballon D'or in 2001 – has truly succeeded. And yet, in a world of micro-fine margins, there is still a football Valhalla in which Michael Owen never trod. Never was he the goalscorer for an indisputably dominant side; not a minute of late-stage elite tournament football has he played. (Yes, I know – the 2001 UEFA Cup. But, with all due respect, that tournament was not, as Owen would surely tell you, the Champions League).

He was the guy who could finish – and for a period, he was always that guy. I feel like I'm just being nice here, for my own sense of decency. Enough.

I am starting to crave a global nuclear assault on a world that has chosen almost entirely ex-footballers to blather over my favourite thing. I fantasise that Michael Owen would be hit, on the crown of his sensible haircut, by one of those missiles. As the nuke howled towards him I'd like it to produce not whatever noise they make in that moment, but a recording of his own voice saying 'The thing about nuclear missiles is when they go off, you'll know about it,' over and over and over again. At his funeral, as the gravediggers drive their spades into the earth, I'd like Martin Keown to stand there saying, 'He's just go to hit that,' while Alan Shearer hysterically rattles off 'Pace, power and determination', instead of shedding tears. This is what it's reduced me too – this kind of fantasy.

hatefilms, said Michael Owen, in his most memorable online utterance. Of course he does. Let me outline why that is: 'Because it's not real, is it? I just think, what's the point of sitting there watching something not real?' Real, as I'm sure Michael would tell you – as would Alan Shearer, as would Martin Keown – is what's in front of you. Somewhere along the line, it has been judged okay for you and I to have to sit in on what comes off like a language episode of 'Learning with Mother' – obscured, perhaps, by the fact that the remedial class kids have excellent physiques and turned up at the studio driving a Bentley. But nonetheless, beneath the 'I played the game so I know' smoke-and-mirrors is a very palpable air of people proving not that they know how to analyse, but how to speak at all. Hello Martin, what is that? 'It's an orange, Gary.' Good. And what's an orange? 'It's round, Gary, it's got colour, and it will obviously be disappointed not to have been in and around the fruit bowl at this stage of the season.' Very good, Martin. That's EXACTLY what an orange is.

Were there some humility to it all – if Owen, for example, followed every utterance with a nervous 'was that right?' to whichever poor soul is forced to coax the utterances from him – I personally would find it one of the most compelling and perhaps even touching spectacles on television. In the important period when those of us who didn't play professional football were allowing our minds to take shape, these guys were listening to someone say 'Keep it tight Mike, keep it tight keep it tight keep it TIGHT Mike', for days and months on end, whilst being paid millions to inhibit the desire for self-growth in all but the smartest of them; and now they are the inarticulate product of that. I get that. But what I cannot take – what makes me long for that nuclear war – is the culture they are collectively allowed to espouse, like they know what they're talking about. I have no doubt their bodies and wired-in instincts knew what they were doing; to imagine they also created a brain-line of articulacy into it all is, basically, to imagine the world being different to how it really is.

Mr #hatefilms is the worst, of course. Predictably, given that his game was the most about instinct. But I hope he knows (he doesn't, he couldn't care less) that to say exactly what is going on in front of you makes it less real, less dramatic. Still, he is paid to dull the senses of people as they watch their favourite thing, and probably describes himself over a glass of red in some leather-padded snug after some racing meet as 'good with the old analysis, me.'

Okay, I did it for you. Here it is, in all its glory:

"His stats this season are phenomenal, even better than previous seasons. His minutes-per-goal ratio is amazing. He scores such a different variety of goals, left foot here, you know, he scores with his right foot, his head. I love goals like this because a lot of strikers nowadays like peeling off (pause to digest the single moment of actual analysis) and wanting a cutback, but the strikers that score 30 goals plus are the ones who get into these types of areas. (Pause to remember Benzema has only once scored 30 goals plus in seven years at Real Madrid). And, as I say, he scores with his head. (Cut to VT of Benzema scoring with his head.) He's an all-round centre-forward, and I really like that he looks like a team player; Rafa will know more than me having managed him, but he looks more of a team player, in an individual type of team, which Real Madrid are, a lot of good individuals. He looks someone that actually plays for the team as well."

I promise that if there was a nuclear war, the resources the world would be left with would not be spent on that analysis. So, every cloud.

To make my life harder – and perhaps to force some perspective – at the time of writing Michael Owen has just provided some genuine insight during the coverage of Everton vs. Arsenal. Not that this will exactly rock your world; but still, he informed us that a striker is generally able to stay on his feet through pretty much all challenges he experiences in the box, and whether he is flattened or not should thus not be the only divining rod of whether it's a penalty – the ref must realise that it's a more complicated thing than that.

Fortunately, next to him Glenn Hoddle is busy rolling out the full repertoire on 'How to say names'. Iwobi becomes 'Iwoooby', Koscielny becomes 'Koskillnee', and Bellerin always lands about three inches away from 'Ballerina'. Fortunately having articulated all of the above, I'm in a good mood, and I quite enjoy it.