An interesting question could be how much of a legend would he be considered here now had he never gone to them lot? Or never even left for Madrid in the first place (or at least doing so for a decent fee for us in return)?
It's a difficult one to answer I reckon, because although he was a superstar to me growing up, I still don't think I held him in quite as high regard as I did Fowler and McManaman just before his emergence. Owen was an incredibly important player for me because of that time in my life that coincided with him ripping it up with us and England; I was too young to fully appreciate Kenny and Rush in their true pomp, and then not quite there either for Barnes, Beardsley and Aldo even though the passion was growing inside me and I did love watching them play and reading about them. The first ones I was absolutely proper obsessed with were Robbie and Steve, had shitloads of posters and stickers of them up everywhere and all that, the combination of them being both flamboyant attacking geniuses and cheeky local lads making it all just 'click' with me at that age. The Roy Evans era was my first proper time paying full attention to every single thing that happened over a season, trying to catch every moment of every game.
Owen looked at one point like he could seriously break all the goalscoring records for us, which now seems actually a pretty ridiculous concept... I reckon Rush is safe up at the top there for a good while yet, very likely forever. But he was definitely a true superstar of the (admittedly not so amazing) side, the one that filled you with hope, made you think we had a chance in every match. His peak for me is inextricably linked with Actua Soccer 3, the evolution of ISS Pro into Pro Evo, and a whole bunch of happy TV & videogamey nostalgia shit. So I'm not sure I can ever genuinely despise him, or disown him as a Liverpool fave of my youth.
