Manchester United is disappointed with Owen Hargreaves’ remarks after the game on Wednesday. The Club gave him the best possible care for three years and is as disappointed as anyone he was not able to play a part in the team’s success at that time. It has shared all the medical records with Manchester City and is comfortable with the actions taken by its medical staff at each step of his many attempts at rehabilitation.

United does not acknowledge any validity in the comments Owen is alleged to have made.

Manchester United has some of the best sports medical staff in world sport, who have made a significant contribution to United’s on-pitch success in recent seasons.

“I don’t blame them for letting me go. I can understand it,” he said. “There comes a point when you have to say this hasn’t worked out. The game has moved on. See you later, all the best. I told the boss I will play 40 games this season. He said he could see me playing again, but he wanted to start bringing the younger players through. When I played for him he was fantastic. He’s a great manager. He knows the players who can win a game for him. He’s the best at that. The guys were great, too. It’s a wonderful club.”

After speaking so highly of United, it was hard to believe your eyes when he was spotted leaving a Manchester City medical three days later. Whilst some chose to be understanding, believing that despite us paying his wages for doing fuck all for three years, he owed us nothing after we released him, I was anything but sympathetic. He received offers from other clubs, clubs where he could play more football if fit, yet opted to join our rivals, who left him out of their Champions League squad.

I was intrigued to see the reaction from the crowd when he returned to Old Trafford wearing City’s colours. Some reds were actually genuinely supportive towards him whilst others, like me, had no time for him whatsoever.

So, it is with great relief that I can confirm there should now be no ambiguity when it comes to the greeting he will receive from our fans, after an interview has been published in today’s papers, criticising the club.

“I’ve had to be a guinea pig for a lot of these treatments,” said Hargreaves. “But when you’re left to try to make something of a difficult situation, it’s not really an option to say: ‘Let’s sit it out and rest for six months.’”

This is interesting as three weeks ago he was singing the praises of our medical staff, claiming they were like friends.

“The people behind the scenes are terrific,” he said. “Some of the guys on the medical staff have become great friends.”

You have to wonder, why was he so desperate to stay at a club who had treated him like a guinea pig?

Three weeks ago, he also talked about his last ever game for United, playing against Wolves last season. Despite carrying an injury, he claimed he was desperate to get back on the pitch and play.

“I wanted to try to keep playing,” he said. “I think it shows how desperate I was, trying to battle on with two muscle injuries. I wanted to at least get to half-time. But I last five minutes!”

However, today, instead of claiming he was desperate to play, he reckons the club forced him to.

“I started that game with two muscle injuries but I should never have been in that position to begin with,” he said. “I was just going to try to get through 45 minutes because that would have been a start. But I didn’t even last five. I wasn’t surprised. I’d said to them that I had a hamstring problem, which I obviously did. I said: ‘I think I’ve got a bit of a problem here.’ I was surprised it didn’t go in the warm-up, to be completely honest. People at times must look at it from a distance and say: ‘Shit, he’s made out of glass.’ But I don’t know many people in the world who could do any sporting event with two muscle tears. There were 70,000 people there and, if I had walked away from the game, it would have looked like I didn’t want to play. I thought: ‘I’ll try to play, I just won’t sprint.’ I know it sounds comical.”

Again, why would Hargreaves ask to stay at the club and to play for free if the club had messed up his treatment so badly?

After United signed Hargreaves, he admitted that he suffered from tendinitis and had been aware of this problem whilst still at Bayern Munich. He did not reveal this to our medical team though. As his condition worsened and operations were needed, Richard Steadman, a surgeon and expert in the field, stated that Hargreaves knees were in a worse state than any other he had come across in his 35 years of experience.

However, Hargreaves seems to have a different side to tell today, insisting that United are to blame.

Asked if he felt United had mishandled the situation, he replied: “You’d have to ask them. There were a few crucial points. We treated it and it got significantly worse through the injections. That obviously had a huge impact. Basically, I was left to pick up the pieces, which was incredibly frustrating. They said it [the injections] would help and that I wouldn’t have any side effects. That obviously wasn’t the case and if I’d known I could have had a reaction like that I wouldn’t have done it. It was a shit position to be in, to be honest. I’m not a guy who wants to bitch and complain. I was trying to make the most of it, but it deteriorated over the season and we had to do these injections. My knee, my tendon, was never the same.”

You just can’t believe the brass neck of some people. Not only picking up a salary for years for contributing nothing to our success, but then signing for our rivals, and then slagging off the care he received. What a cunt. It appears it doesn’t take long for the lack of class and lies to rub off on a person at Wastelands.

Sir Alex Ferguson has today defended our medical team against Hargreaves claims, whilst revealing an official club statement will be released later on.

“We have been trying to analyse all the stuff Hargreaves has said this morning and we’ll have a club statement this afternoon to address it,” he said. “But as far as I’m concerned, for what it’s worth, my medical staff are one of the main reasons Manchester United have been so successful over the last few years. There is absolutely no doubt about that. I have fantastic medical staff and a great sports science team. Do you think we would be successful if we had an operation that wasn’t 100 per cent absolutely brilliantly done? The doctor, five physios and sports scientists are fantastic. That’s my opinion of Manchester United and it’s more important than what anyone else has to say about it.”

Sue the cunt.

Hargreaves made his début at Wastelands in a 1-0 defeat but he was the silver lining that day. He was no Roy Keane but he was the closest we’d come to signing someone that important to the midfield since our former skipper’s departure. From then on, whether in the centre of the park or at right back, or even on the right wing, Hargreaves really gave his all and looked to be a cracking player.

It was all downhill for him from there though and he has spent the past three years on the treatment table. The club have stood by him throughout this time, obviously paying his wages and for his treatment. The manager’s patience grew thin with the player as he insisted on trying out his own treatments and spending a lot of time away from the club.

After hobbling off in his last ever United game against Wolves last season, doing his calf and hamstring, he then dislocated his shoulder in a Reserves game. Hargreaves himself acknowledged that fans were right to claim he was made out of glass.

He claims he offered to stay at the club and play for free this season, so desperate was he to stay at United. “Manchester United is a wonderful club,” he said in an interview last week. United turned down his offer, with plans to bring through younger players in to the team. The manager has been true to his word, fielding teams with an average age of 22/23-years-old. Hargreaves would be occupying the place in the squad that could be used on playing a young lad.

Hargreaves also claimed that he wanted to sign for a club where he would play 40 games this season. With Tottenham Hotspur, Aston Villa and West Brom all keen to sign him, it looked as though there might be some hope of him making a come back, however unlikely it seemed.

So to then find out yesterday that Hargreaves was intending to sign for City, a club looking for a player to cover Yaya Toure’s absence in January, is hard to understand.

Whilst I understand he’s free to join whichever club he likes after United made the decision to let him go, I don’t think our fans would be out of order to expect him not to join our hated rivals after our club has spent three years paying his way. Throughout this time, we’ve been urging him back, getting ridiculously hopeful every time he claimed he was ready, only to have another set back. It’s not about loyalty in the sense that we expect him to be some dyed in the wool United fan, but about having a bit of common decency and respect. United losing patience with him after three years doesn’t warrant him throwing the money, care and good will back in our faces.

The second issue is the fact that if he cares so little for money, as he claimed in his interview, even being willing to play for United for free, why is he signing for The Richest Club In The World (TM) where he won’t get a game? Like most United fans, I’ve felt really sorry for him these past few years, as he’s missed the peak of his career out injured. I felt even worse for him when he released by the club. But what a waste of emotions. You would think any professional footballer would be desperate to get on the football pitch after three years out. If Hargreaves is going to manage be fit, how many games can he realistically get at City?  He turns 31 this season, so even if he does manage to beat the injury, he’s never going to be as good as he was.

Of course, City have Champions League football and that should be a pull to players like Aguero, Clichy and Nasri, who can realistically expect to be in the starting XI or there abouts. But why would playing in Europe make a difference to Hargreaves? City are going to drop Nigel De Jong or Yaya Toure for Hargo are they?

If Hargreaves does have 40 games in him this season, like he claims, why choose to join a club where he would be lucky to play in half that many? You would think he would be desperate to make up for lost time, when in reality, it turns out he’s just like all those other mercenaries, happy to warm a bench. He is their new Patrick Vieira, who started just four league games last season.

“SHOCK! HORROR! Footballer in new mercenary scandal!” I know it isn’t a big deal to find out that a player is money hungry and sadly, yet again, I’ve been naive. I just had an idea of what Hargreaves was like as a player and wasted sympathy on him for his time out. But if he really cared about playing regular football after so long out, he’d have given Spurs (5th last season), Villa (9th) or West Brom (11th) a go. All clubs would have offered him a pay per play deal. You would be right to assume City will pay him more per play than any club interested.

I wished him well when I talked about his most recent interview. It goes without saying I now totally revoke that. I’m not outraged, I’m not devastated, but I am disappointed. I thought better of him, both in terms of his dedication towards the game and just being a man of common decency and respect, so it is disappointing to learn I had him wrong. He wasn’t a club legend and he’s tarnished how he will be remembered, but essentially, he was desperate to stay at United and we turned him down. But I won’t shed a tear if Vida snaps him on derby day.

Hargreaves recently revealed that he offered to play for United for free this season but the club declined. However, he said he was in great shape and ready to make 40 appearances for a club this season.

Sir Alex Ferguson became increasingly frustrated with Hargreaves as the club continued to stand by him when helping him recover from his terrible injuries. Hargreaves insisted on finding his own treatments and the club were concerned about the mental barriers preventing him from returning, as much as the physical ones.

Mark Van Bommel has revealed he has turned down two moves to City over the past year, indicating that our rivals are certainly looking for a player in this mould. It’s hard to imagine that Hargreaves would get a game at City, even if by miracle he ever managed to be fit, and it’s hard to see his logic in signing for the club. Surely his priority should be playing football after so many years out, not warming a bench for top dollar.

As United fans wished him well, little did we know he was about to sign for our hated rivals.

The injury started when he was with Bayern Munich and broke his leg. Hargreaves claims that the recovery from that injury was the start of his problems.

“When you suffer an injury like that you go into plaster and you lose a lot of muscle,” he said. “And even when I was finally ready to come back, I probably didn’t have the same bulk. That was probably when I started to damage the patella tendon on the outside of my knee joint. I played 10 straight games for Munich and then one day we did some sprint training and it went pop. It was probably a month before the end of the season. It settled down and I got through the medical at United but now I realise the problem was probably developing quite rapidly. The quadriceps is the shock absorber for the tendon and when the tendon starts to break down it doesn’t have the ability to heal itself. When I joined United I told myself I’m not going to let it bother me. I’m the new guy, there are high expectations, I want to play. The niggle is there so I sit out an England game. We started doing double sessions and my knee flared up. So I dropped out of a few sessions; did a bit of maintenance. But I just lived with the discomfort.”

We’ve seen Ole Gunnar Solksjaer come back from an injury when nobody seemed to believe he could do it, meaning United fans were maybe more patient than most when Hargreaves was attempting to make his return.

Last season, he started against Wolves, much to our surprise, but only lasted five minutes before doing his hamstring when crossing the ball.

“When I walked off the pitch after five minutes in that game against Wolves last season, people must have thought, ‘What is it with this guy? Is he made of fucking glass? Is he kidding?’” he said. “It was my first game in two years. I lasted five minutes before I tore my fucking hamstring. And when I had the scan afterwards there were two tears in my calf, too. Walking off the pitch that day was the longest walk of my life. It took all my energy just to make it back to the dressing-room. It’s my first game in two years, I’ve had a standing ovation and I’ve now got 70,000 people looking at me – millions more on TV – and all I can think is, ‘Try not to limp’. I look like a joker. I wanted to try to keep playing. I think it shows how desperate I was, trying to battle on with two muscle injuries. I wanted to at least get to half-time. But I last five minutes! I’m not an emotional guy but when I finally made it into the dressing-room, I just cried. I was sitting there with one of the physios and I was so overwhelmed. I had put so much into it. For two years I had been visualising the moment in my mind.”

It wasn’t just Hargreaves who was devastated, but his team mates too, with Edwin Van der Sar taking it upon himself to look after our broken midfielder. He went round to his house that evening just to sit and talk with him.

After recovering from that injury, Hargreaves played in a Reserves game and ended up dislocating his shoulder, and that was his season over. His contract expired in the summer.

“I said my goodbyes to the boys before the Champions League final. That was it. I was gone,” he said. “I don’t blame them for letting me go. I can understand it. There comes a point when you have to say this hasn’t worked out. The game has moved on. See you later, all the best. I told the boss I will play 40 games this season. He said he could see me playing again, but he wanted to start bringing the younger players through. When I played for him he was fantastic. He’s a great manager. He knows the players who can win a game for him. He’s the best at that. The guys were great, too. It’s a wonderful club.”

Best of luck, Owen.

Nominees: Michael Owen, Wes Brown and Owen Hargreaves
After picking up an injury in the League Cup final in February 2010, where he scored a goal in our 2-1 victory over Aston Villa, it was soon revealed Michael Owen would be out for the rest of the season. He’s played a total of 7 games since, racking up 245 minutes of football and scoring 3 goals.

After having a brief cameo which lasted a couple of minutes against Wolves, Hargreaves has vanished again. Any hopes you had of him ever coming back should be put to one side now. It ain’t going to happen.

Wes Brown had a falling out with the boss during the pre-season tour and has started just 5 games since, 3 of those in the league, and played in a total of 9. He’s not injured, where is he?

Winner: Owen Hargreaves

“Owen has come back training, he trained yesterday with the first team,” said Ferguson. “He looked very good. I was surprised actually how good he was looking. It’s an extra string to our bow. After being out for so long, we’ll have to monitor him and see how he progresses in the next few weeks. But it’s good to see him back. Because he’s been out for so long you have to see whether there’s going to be a relapse. That’s the first thing on our mind. But having watched him in training, if he continues that way he’s going to give me a selection problem.”

Michael Carrick is also back on the training field. “Michael started training last week,” Ferguson continued. “He had an injection on his Achilles to settle it down. It was nothing serious, just one of those niggling little problems you can get, particularly at the start of the season when grounds are firm. He’s fine, he’s started training.”

I remember when Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was coming back from his knee injuries and at times it appeared totally hopeless. I’m not comparing the injuries, as clearly Hargreaves is in a much worse condition, but in terms of hopelessness, the situations are comparable.

“The thought of playing – that’s not to mention scoring – in that red jersey again is the best motivation in the world,” said Ole in September 2004 when he had just been ruled out for the season. “I have been there and I will be back. I will score at Old Trafford again. That’s a promise to myself and to the Manchester United fans.”

Even the manager conceded at times that Ole may never play for the first tema again, but not only did he return to the first team, he scored 11 goals for us in his last season, in all 4 competitions.

Some injuries are impossible to come back from and that may well be the case for Hargreaves. If the club decide it is impossible, then we should forget about his inclusion in the 25 man squad, but if there is any chance he’ll play again, he needs to be included. A player can be in the gym or on the treatment table all they want but it won’t get them anywhere if they don’t believe they’re going to play again. If Solskjaer had given up hope, he never would have made it back for us. If Hargreaves doesn’t make the squad, even with the promise of being included in the next one, he will give up hope and that will be the end of him.

When Wednesday comes, we should know one way or another whether Hargreaves has any chance of a United future.

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Solskjaer’s Greatest Moments: Return from Injury

Months have flown by and Hargreaves was still out, although did get a run out for a few minutes at the end of the season, much to our relief.

However, it looks as though that happiness is to be short lived, with Hargreaves back in treatment.

“The bad news is that Owen Hargreaves is back in America seeing the specialist,” said Ferguson. “He won’t be ready for the start of the season. I don’t know when he’ll be back.”

Having a player like Owen Hargreaves fit could make all the difference to our season. When will it be time to draw a line under this one and find someone new?

As for other injuries, Anderson will be back by the end of September, Michael Owen will be back for the start of the season and Rio Ferdinand is aiming for the same return.

“I’ve missed two seasons and I’m disappointed about that,” said Hargreaves. “But I’m 29 and hopefully I’ve got another six to eight years left in me. Being out for so long is obviously not something I would have envisaged myself going through. It’s been a learning experience and I try and take the positives from it. It was short but obviously I’m looking forward to next season. We’ve got our last game this weekend and hopefully I’ll play a bit again, and then hopefully get ready to attack next season.”