50 Up For Souey

Graeme Souness, celebrating his 50th Premiership game in charge, expects to see more of the same from the Owen/Shearer partnership.

Souness: 'We are delighted to have Michael Owen at Newcastle. He is a proven goalscorer at every level. We feel that once we get everybody fit we'll create even more openings for him. We've missed Michael when he's not been in our team through injury. He was the difference today along with Alan Shearer - who is still a very big player for our team.

'We felt the two of them today could get at West Ham's back four and score goals and that's how it turned out. It wasn't a silky passing game because we are missing a lot of our players. We are just delighted with the three points.

'West Ham are a handful at home and they tried to get after us. We shot ourselves in the foot by giving them a penalty and allowing them back into the game. It should have been an easy 20 minutes for us but at times we were holding on.

'Strikers make the difference on the day and that's why Michael is valued the way he is. He's scored seven goals for us now and goals win and change games.'