• Owen signing takes just three days for United to complete
• 'A fantastic opportunity and one I will seize with both hands'

Michael Owen tonight signed a two-year contract with Manchester United after completing a rigorous medical examination to dispel some of the concerns surrounding his injury problems.

Owen underwent a series of medical checks at a private hospital in Manchester this afternoon before travelling to the club's training ground in Carrington to finalise the deal which, as a free agent, will not cost United a transfer fee.

The lightning move by Sir Alex Ferguson caught the football world by surprise, the move being done and dusted in the space of three days. "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. I agreed without a moment's thought," said Owen. "This is a fantastic opportunity for me and I intend to seize it with both hands."

United were able to confirm late this evening that the England striker will be joining Wayne Rooney, Dimitar Berbatov and Luis Antonio Valencia in a new-look attack, and the club have pencilled in a press conference to unveil him either next Friday or the following Monday.

"I am now looking forward to being a 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," the 29-year-old said.

His debut is likely to be the first game of United's tour to south-east Asia, against a Malaysia XI on 18 July. His first appearance at Old Trafford will be on 5 August when Valencia come to Manchester for a pre-season friendly.

Ferguson welcomed the new arrival by saying: "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."

His contract at Old Trafford is based on bonuses for playing and scoring but Owen has been happy to take a huge pay cut from his £110,000-a-week salary at Newcastle.

• Players in City dressing room on good terms with defender
• Chelsea reluctance to negotiate among obstacles to move

Manchester City are to persist in their attempts to sign John Terry amid a growing sense within the club that the Chelsea captain is seriously considering his future and could be tempted by a salary that would almost double his current pay.

Mark Hughes, the City manager, has been encouraged by messages from associates of the player, the most prominent being one of Terry's international team-mates. There are several players inside the City dressing room who are on good terms with Terry, and Hughes has spent months putting together enough background information to be confident that a deal most Chelsea fans would like to believe was fantasy is, indeed, a possibility.

That manifested itself in the City executive chairman, Garry Cook, making a verbal bid of around £30m during a meeting with his Chelsea counterpart, Peter Kenyon, and following it up with a faxed offer stating they would also pull out of the tribunal to set the fee for Daniel Sturridge, the teenage striker who has just moved in the other direction.

The City hierarchy were braced for Chelsea's reaction, namely an aggressively worded statement that the offer was "completely rejected" and "[Chelsea] would like to make clear, and will not do so again, that John is not for sale".

Chelsea's reluctance to enter into negotiations is genuine and City are acutely aware there are obstacles to overcome given Terry's strong affinity to the London club and the way he has portrayed himself as "Mr Chelsea", openly declaring that he would never leave Stamford Bridge.

There is, however, also a sense that Chelsea's decision to publicise the Terry bid, when they could feasibly have kept it quiet, is the opening move of a PR operation to make it public knowledge that they are opposed to losing the player. The £30m offer was largely based on that being the amount Manchester United paid for Rio Ferdinand when they made him the world's most expensive defender in 2002. The difference is that Ferdinand was 23 at the time, whereas Terry is 28, but Chelsea are known to regard it as an embarrassingly low bid.

• Mike Ashley set to take whopping loss on investment
• Malaysians shown around St James' Park on Thursday

A Malaysian consortium reportedly submitted an £80m bid to Mike Ashley for control of Newcastle United yesterday. The Malaysians, who were shown round St James' Park on Thursday after watching the slightly bemused players being put through their paces at the training ground, seemingly made their offer on a day when Seymour Pierce, the investment bank brokering the sale, was also hoping for rival bids from at least two of the other three consortiums which have been carrying out due diligence at the club.

All interested parties have signed non-disclosure agreements and their identities remain closely guarded secrets although Freddy Shepherd, Newcastle's former chairman, is involved with one of them.

Another consortium, from the United States, had been regarded as the favourite but, when the Malaysians flew to London with Derek Llambias, Newcastle's managing director, on Thursday evening and immediately met Seymour Pierce, that perception changed.

Ashley, who wants £100m for the club and will take a thumping loss on his investment, is likely to spend the weekend pondering his options but, before any substantive progress is made, one consortium will need to sign a sales-purchase agreement. That would set the takeover in full motion and allow the appointment of a manager – most probably, though not definitely, Shearer.

Despite Seymour Pierce's optimism that a deal can be quickly concluded, nothing is certain and some observers fear that legal and financial barriers could dictate that things are destined to drag on for a few more weeks yet.

Shepherd was on a golfing break in Portugal yesterday.

Manchester United scored a paltry 68 goals last season. Owen's unerring finishing could help them find their rhythm

The willingness to sign Michael Owen makes Sir Alex Ferguson look as much a collector as a manager. There might already be a cabinet reserved in some museum of football for a player who is just 29. Indeed, it is the throwback quality that makes him valuable to Manchester United. Large as it is, the Old Trafford squad has not contained a proven poacher since Ruud van Nistelrooy was sold to Real Madrid and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's career drew to a close.

Few top-level clubs have such a figure. Hardly anyone else fits that description in the Premier League, other than Jermain Defoe at Tottenham. United must sense the continuing value of these specialists, despite tactical systems that leave scant room for them nowadays. In April Federico Macheda's two goals for the club to date turned impending draws into victories against Sunderland and Aston Villa.

It adds to the burgeoning lore of the Italian to treat those strikes as if they alone had delivered the four-point margin by which United retained the title. Macheda is a mere 17 but there was a reminder there that goalmouth experts can never be wholly obsolete. He may be too young to prosper week after week but Ferguson would like to have a predator on hand who is fully equipped. The question now is whether Owen can continue to meet that description. His irrelevance in the closing weeks of last season was alarming.

Alan Shearer, following his installation as manager at the beginning of April, had placed a great emphasis on the impact Owen might have on Newcastle's prospects of survival. The calculation must have been that this emphasis on the player's status would bring out the very best in him. Owen turned out to be incapable of finding the net.

On the closing day of the campaign he appeared purely as an ineffective substitute, in the middle of the second half at Villa Park, when the side was seeking an equaliser that would have kept them in the Premier League. No one else scored either, and there were far deeper factors in Newcastle's relegation than his difficulties, but it was sobering to see him achieve no more against Villa than complete three innocuous passes over 24 minutes.

Fabio Capello declined to name Owen in the England party after he had recovered from injury in March. Some of the Italian's predecessors as England manager would have included him out of mere habit but he lacked any in-built trust in the striker. Ferguson's circumstances, however, differ radically from Capello's. The United squad is very large and there is no major significance in adding another name.

Owen, if the move works out, would restore the opportunism that has largely gone missing since Solskjaer conceded that he could not overcome his knee problems. For all the efforts of the departed Cristiano Ronaldo, United do not score as freely as they once did. They hit 68 goals in the Premier League last season; the corresponding figure for 2007-08 was 80. Ferguson's team has become more effective in the Champions League by taking fewer risks but ebullience could be permitted on other fronts.

It may be that Owen can help United win the run-of-mill matches more easily, so allowing his team-mates to conserve energy for key fixtures in a long campaign. When he was functioning normally, the attacker scored four times in his five appearances during the Euro 2008 qualifiers. Assuming he stays fit, it will be interesting to see the extent to which he is used by Ferguson.

The inability of Owen and Wayne Rooney to dovetail for their country has almost attained comic proportions. They could put in more practice at United but each would prefer to be partnered with a target man. Rooney has thrived for England when stationed close to Emile Heskey.

As it is, Ferguson could continue to use Rooney towards the left, even if the player would rather be in the middle, and employ, say, Dimitar Berbatov to prompt Owen in United's 4-2-3-1 system. That, however, assumes that the newcomer will have a key role.

It may turn out that there is to be no such status for Owen. If he is to be a lone striker, which seems inevitable now that 4-4-2 is all but extinct, he will probably flourish only against weaker clubs when United, as they dominate, get many players forward to support him.

In the tense and tactical contests he could, like Solskjaer, be a specialist substitute who can winkle out a goal. That may be a step down for someone so renowned in his youth but it would constitute a renaissance after four years of decline at Newcastle.

• Former England midfielder has signed two-year deal
• 41-year-old was sacked after six months at Blackburn

Paul Ince has returned to MK Dons for his second spell as manager little more than a year after leaving for Blackburn.

The former Manchester United and England midfielder has signed a two-year deal with the Buckinghamshire club and he will be hoping he repeat the success of his previous one-year spell when he led them to the League Two title as well as the Johnstone's Paint Trophy.

The 41-year-old then moved to Blackburn where he experienced a turbulent six months in charge of the Premier League club and he was sacked after winning just six games to be replaced by Sam Allardyce.

Ince will replace Roberto Di Matteo, who left to join West Brom earlier this week, and he will be looking to guide the side into the Championship after they lost in the play-offs last season.

The MK Dons chairman, Pete Winkelman, told the club's official website: "I'm absolutely thrilled to be able to bring Paul back to Milton Keynes. He enjoyed incredible success during his first spell with us and showed himself more than worthy of a shot at the Premier League.

"But we always felt he had unfinished business here and it feels absolutely right that he should return to the club and build on the very momentum he helped to create."