Sir Alex Ferguson has handed Michael Owen the Manchester United number seven shirt - and declared Old Trafford closed for transfer business.

It was anticipated Ferguson would make further signings in addition to Owen, Antonio Valencia and Gabriel Obertan, who joined last week from Bordeaux.

But, faced with a market over-inflated by Real Madrid and Manchester City, Ferguson has decided his current squad is good enough to challenge for an unprecedented fourth consecutive league title, even though Cristiano Ronaldo and Carlos Tevez have left.

He said: “It is the end of our business, so all these stories about who we are supposed to be getting - forget it.”

It means Owen will take over Ronaldo’s shirt and his place in an attacking line-up containing Wayne Rooney and Dimitar Berbatov, plus youngsters Daniel Welbeck and Federico Macheda, who will both be given a chance to prove they are worthy of the accolades that have been bestowed on them.

“They are both young players - but young players with ability always get a chance here.”

Liverpool manager Rafael Benitez has revealed he considered signing Michael Owen this summer, but came to the conclusion that he would not command a regular first-team place.

The 29-year-old spent eight successful seasons at Anfield at the start of his career, scoring 158 goals in all competitions.

However that has not stopped the striker joining the Reds’ fiercest rivals Manchester United on a free transfer from Newcastle this summer.

Benitez told The People: “We had contact with different people and were analysing the situation.

“But if you want to play Torres and Gerrard there is not always a lot of space for other players.

“When I brought back Robbie Fowler it was a different situation. We were looking for someone who could understand his role clearly and he was a good finisher.

“But we have a World Cup coming up and all the top players want to play. In his position it would be hard for Owen to play every week at Liverpool.”

The Spaniard is also confident he already has enough squad depth at his disposal to cope with any injuries to his preferred front pairing.

“We are confident in (Dirk) Kuyt, (Ryan) Babel, (David) Ngog and (Andriy) Voronin for next season. We have players with quality,” he added.

“People say I might need another striker but I remember signing Robbie Keane and everyone was saying good things.

“Then after I sold Robbie people were saying I was short of strikers but we scored more goals than anyone in the Premier League.”

Karim Benzema revealed he rejected advances from Manchester United before opting for his “dream” move to Real Madrid.

Benzema established himself as one of Europe’s hottest properties during his time at Lyon, for whom he scored 54 competitive goals in the last two seasons, and he was regularly linked with some of the continent’s biggest clubs.

Madrid won the race for the France international after having a 35million euros bid accepted by Lyon last week, but while Benzema insists the Spanish giants were always his top choice, he confirmed they were not his only suitors.

When asked what other teams were keen on him, Benzema said: “There were quite a few clubs that contacted me like Manchester (United), Inter Milan and Barcelona, but I decided to come here.

“Real Madrid are an excellent club. I’ve dreamt about playing here since I was 15 years old.

“Florentino (Madrid president Perez) spoke to me about the team and the project that he wanted to create. I wanted to play at Real Madrid anyway so he didn’t have to convince me of hardly anything.”

Benzema is the the fourth new arrival to be unveiled by the Spanish giants since Perez returned to the presidency at the start of June, following in the footsteps of Cristiano Ronaldo, Kaka and Raul Albiol.

An estimated 90,000 people turned up for Ronaldo’s presentation at the Bernabeu on Monday, while around 55,000 were in attendance for Kaka’s unveiling last week.

The amount of people that watched Benzema’s presentation on Thursday night was considerably less than those two players, with around 20,000 in the stands, but the Frenchman was still delighted with his reception and immediately endeared himself to the fans by repeatedly kissing the Madrid badge.

“It was very exciting. Real Madrid fans have a special relationship with the players and I am very grateful for that,” he said.

“I felt some strong emotions today and that’s why I kissed the badge.”

Benzema, who has not yet been given a shirt number at his new club, was a prolific scorer with Lyon and he is confident he can be a regular marksman at Madrid as well - if he can secure himself a place in what is promising to be a star-studded line-up.

“I don’t want to promise a set number of goals, although I hope to score a lot. With players like Kaka, (Cristiano) Ronaldo and Raul it will be very easy for us to get goals,” said Benzema, whose signing takes Madrid’s spending this summer towards the £200million mark.

“I’m aware that there is great competition at the club and maybe I cannot always play, but I’ve come here to fight, so it’s not going to be a problem.”

Bordeaux president Jean-Louis Triaud has revealed that winger Gabriel Obertan is on the verge of signing for Manchester United.

The highly rated 20-year-old became a regular for Les Girondins at the just 17 but last season found chances hard to come by under former Red Devils defender Laurent Blanc.

The French Under-21 international was loaned out to fellow Ligue 1 side Lorient for the second half of last season where he featured 15 times scoring just the one goal.

Arsenal, Inter and AC Milan are said to have been interested in the youngster but it appears United have won the race for his signature for an undisclosed fee.

“There is a very strong likelihood that the deal will go ahead,” confirmed Triaud to L’Equipe.

“Manchester United want to sign him and, for our part, we would be delighted to see Gabriel playing for such a prestigious club.

“We will make the official announcement when the time is right,”

Everton are preparing a shock move for Manchester United midfield stalwart Paul Scholes, according to reports in Sunday’s press.

Both the Daily Star Sunday and the Sunday Mirror have linked Toffees boss David Moyes with a move for the 34-year-old Scholes.

The one-club star, who has made more than 600 appearances for the champions, is no longer a first choice inclusion for United, but Sir Alex Ferguson is unlikely to allow the former England man to leave as he still sees him as an important role model and squad man.

Everton already have a strong ex-United contingent at Goodison with Phil Neville, Tim Howard and Louis Saha all plying their trade with the Toffees.

Stoke City, Middlesbrough and Bolton Wanderers have also been linked with the veteran, who said in December 2008 that he believed he had two years left before he hung up his boots.

Former Manchester United striker Carlos Tevez is confident he will not be viewed as a traitor by the Old Trafford faithful if he completes a transfer to the club’s cross-city rivals.

The Argentina international turned down a permanent deal at United last month following a two-year loan deal and has since been linked with a lucrative move to wealthy Manchester City.

Chelsea are also reportedly tracking the 25-year-old’s availability, but Eastlands is believed to be Tevez’s likely destination this summer.

Tevez told The People: “If I play for Manchester City I don’t think the United fans will feel I am a traitor.

“They have to remember that at least as far as I know I have been thrown out of the club and I have to study the best offers available.”

Tevez’s decision to turn down the offer of a five-year deal at United has been defended by his adviser Kia Joorabchian, and the player himself insists manager Sir Alex Ferguson left him with little choice but to move on.

“It has come about because I could not stand my sporting situation at Manchester United any longer,” he continued.

“My first year was good in all senses. I played in the games and felt respected by the coach but in my second year some strange things happened that I still do not understand.

“After the game at Old Trafford where Liverpool beat us [4-1, in March], Ferguson ignored me almost as if I was to blame for the defeat when really Liverpool dominated us all over the pitch.

“After that the fans called for me to be in the team but he never took the advice on board because he always knows best.

“I gave everything for Manchester United and people know that. For that reason I don’t deserve the way things have ended up.”

The Republik of Mancunia website has responded to the most remarkable bit of transfer news this summer with an article titled ‘God No, Not Michael Owen’. F365 makes the case for why United signing Michael Owen would be a really good idea…

* United require another attacker. To start the season with just two youngsters as support two recognised top-class strikers would be a risk too far. In comparison, signing Michael Owen on a free transfer is no risk at all. A proven goalscorer who is presumably joining United in the knowledge that he will start the season behind Wayne Rooney and Dimi Berbatov in the pecking order, Owen is the perfect fit for what United require.

Not incidentally, it was mostly from the bench that Owen scored his 13 La Liga goals during his single season at Real Madrid, ending the campaign with the league’s highest ratio of goals scored to number of minutes played.

* Signing the 5ft 8 Owen would balance United’s attacking options. Berbatov, Danny Welbeck and Macheda are all big ‘uns while Rooney is the only little ‘un. True enough, Owen and Rooney failed to dovetail convincingly on England duty but that potential problem may be irrelevant: Ferguson probably has no intention of playing them together.

* If it is true that he has agreed a pay-as-you-play deal with a series of performance-related bonuses attached then Owen has passed the first, pivotal test. With Everton reputedly ready to offer him a far-superior weekly wage of £65,000, Owen’s willingness to accept the incentivised deal on offer at Old Trafford indicates that he still has the required ambition and hunger to succeed.

Furthermore, Owen has not only proved himself to the club’s manager but also made his transfer a risk-free venture for the board to approve. Nor can the club’s owners dissent: By joining on a Bosman free on knock-down wages, Owen’s arrival would not conflict with the reported age limit of 25 imposed on new purchases.

* If those performance-related clauses aren’t incentive enough, then the proximity of next summer’s World Cup should be sufficient to a player who has lost part of his name. England’s Michael Owen will be desperate to reclaim his place and his recall will only be possible if he makes a success of his first year at Old Trafford.

* Ahh, yes, the injuries. Don’t you think that Sir Alex might be aware of them as well, though? Before signing, Owen will first have to sign a medical that is being universally described as ’stringent’. That should help allay a few of the doubts. Moreover, it is not as if Owen’s body is fundamentally broken; he is not in recovery from a career-threatening knee injury or leg break. Instead, his career has been blighted in recent years by a series of annoying, inconvenient happenstance injuries - he missed the start of last season, for instance, with the mumps. And if there is one medical department in the world that is likely to put him on the road to recovery then it is in residence at Old Trafford.

* There are few more potent goalscorers in world football, never mind England. Even at Newcastle he continued to be prolific: the stat his critics fail to include when remarking disdainfully that he only started 58 league games for Newcastle is that he also managed to score 26 goals in that time.

* And that was when playing for a struggling team, sometimes in midfield, and as a poacher.

The retort to the argument that Owen’s pace has gone is that it was going even before he joined Real Madrid and it is precisely because Owen has morphed into a penalty-box predator that he is such a viable acquisition for a leading club. In a side near the bottom of the table, a predator is a luxury because he has so little to feed on. In a side challenging for the title, as United inevitably will be, he is in his element.

* A former European Footballer of the Year with the experience of playing for Real Madrid, Liverpool and England, Owen will not be overawed by the pressure of playing for United. And as a native of the north-west, he’ll have no problems settling in either.

* United have previously enjoyed bountiful success by signing strikers at the finale of their career - and the precedent set by Henrik Larsson and Teddy Sheringham will undoubtedly have been an encouragement to Sir Alex.

* The arrival of an Englishman will also be useful if FIFA succeed in bringing forward their plan to introduce a ’six plus five’ quota.

* Owen loves the horses. In other words, he’ll be the perfect companion for Sir Alex on the team bus.

* Liverpool fans are going to hate it if he joins United. Especially as the Law of Returning Players means he is absolutely guaranteed to score against them next season.

Pete Gill

Empoli full-back Alberto Massacci claims he is on his way to Manchester United after talks with Sir Alex Ferguson.

The 16-year-old has still to make his Empoli debut but is regarded as a genuine talent and long-term prospect for the English champions.

United have been criticised in the past for signing young Italian talent before they can be secured to contracts by their respective clubs, as was the case with Federico Macheda and Giuseppe Rossi.

Massacci, if reports are to be believed, has already had a medical with United and is to fly over to Manchester on Sunday to thrash out the finer details of the deal.

“When Sir Alex Ferguson rang me up, I couldn’t believe it,” he told the Gazzetta dello Sport.

“I had an hour-long conversation with him, in English. He seemed a humble person and nobody from the club made the pressure of an historic side weigh on my shoulders.

“In life a chance like this only comes past you once, so you’ve got to grab it with both hands. It isn’t an easy decision aged 16 to leave home, family and friends, but I don’t want to have regrets.”

Real Madrid-bound striker Karim Benzema has revealed he turned down the chance to join Manchester United and a host of European giants.

The France international was thought to be high on Sir Alex Ferguson’s wanted list following the departures of Cristiano Ronaldo and Carlos Tevez.

However, despite being heavily linked with a move to Old Trafford it was big-spending Real Madrid who agreed a fee with Lyon for the 21-year-old’s services.

Benzema has confirmed he could have joined the likes of Manchester United, Barcelona, Internazionale or AC Milan, but only wanted to play alongside the likes of Kaka and Ronaldo at El Santiago Bernabeu.

“When I started to play football I had a lot of dreams. The first was to become professional footballer. The second to play in French team. The third was to wear the Real Madrid shirt.

“I am both sad and happy. Happy to join the greatest club in the world, and sad to leave my club, my friends, and all the education staff. I own everything to Lyon.

“Indeed, I could have joined Manchester United, Barcelona, Internazionale or AC Milan, but Real are unique. Everyone is dreaming to play at Real.

“I really wanted to stay at Lyon until the next World Cup. The opportunity to play with stars like Kaka, Cristiano Ronaldo and so many great players, made me change my mind.”

Benzema, who is now relishing the prospect of making his debut for the Spanish giants, says the visit of Florentino Perez to his house played a major role in his decision to join.

“Real are a kid’s dream. Florentino Perez came to my house at Bron. That was important,” he continued. “He can speak French and I understood he absolutely wanted me. I could only leave for Real. It was my dream, that’s all.

“I am eager to be at the training-sessions, wear that shirt, and play the first league match. I know I will join a new world.

“Why shouldn’t I play each match? I want to make a name for my-self as quickly as possible.”

Michael Owen has sealed his shock move to Manchester United, signing a two-year contract to keep him at Old Trafford until June 2012.

Michael Owen has moved to Manchester United after his contract ended with New Castle United he has joined Manchester United for a free transfer.

The former Liverpool, Real Madrid and England striker completed a series of stringent medical tests this evening and has signed a two-year deal with the Barclays Premier League champions.

Owen, 29, had earlier spent the day at United’s Carrington training complex as the terms of his free transfer were thrashed out, after he lapsed out of contract with Newcastle at the end of last month.

Speaking on the club’s website, Sir Alex Ferguson said: “Michael is a world class forward with a proven goalscoring record at the highest level and that has never been in question. Coming to Manchester United with the expectations that we have is something that Michael will relish.”

Owen himself admitted that the move had come ‘out of the blue. “I had just begun to talk to other clubs when out of the blue Sir Alex phoned me on Wednesday afternoon, invited me to have breakfast with him the next morning during which he told me that he wanted to sign me. I agreed without a moment’s thought,” he said.

“This is a fantastic opportunity for me and I intend to seize it with both hands.

“I am now looking forward to being a Manchester United player and I am fortunate that I already know so many of the players here. I missed pre-season last year and am pleased that I will be starting at Carrington from day one.

“I want to thank Sir Alex for the faith he has shown in me and I give him my assurance that I will repay him with my goals and performances”

Owen had undergone a medical examination yesterday to assess the troublesome knee which had sidelined him for much of his stay at St James’ Park.

Despite his previous injury problems the deal represents little risk to Red Devils boss Sir Alex Ferguson, who has been a long-time admirer of the 29-year-old.

“Michael is a world class forward with a proven goalscoring record at the highest level and that has never been in question,” said the United boss.

“Coming to Manchester United with the expectations that we have is something that Michael will relish.”

It is believed Ferguson has struck a pay-as-you-play deal which will involve a basic weekly wage enhanced by bonuses.

The player has taken a significant pay cut from the £110,000 he was reported to be on at Newcastle, for whom he scored 10 goals as they were relegated to the Coca-Cola Championship last season.

But it is the lure of playing for the champions, with the promise of Champions League football again, which excites Owen now as he tries to force his way back into the reckoning with England coach Fabio Capello.

Owen admitted United’s approach came as much as a shock to him as it did the rest of football.

“I had just begun to talk to other clubs when out of the blue Sir Alex phoned me on Wednesday afternoon, invited me to have breakfast with him next morning during which he told me that he wanted to sign me,” he said.

“I agreed without a moment’s thought. This is a fantastic opportunity for me and I intend to seize it with both hands.

“I am now looking forward to being a Manchester United player and I am fortunate that I already know so many of the players here.

“I missed pre-season last year and am pleased that I will be starting at Carrington from day one.

“I want to thank Sir Alex for the faith he has shown in me and I give him my assurance that I will repay him with my goals and performances.”