Manchester United FC Official Thread

Owen Hargreaves has given a frank interview today in The Daily Mail where he discusses his injury hell as well as his hopes for the future.
He doesn’t have an agent and offered to play for United for free this
season, showing the measure of the man, and sadly, making his story all
the more heart breaking.
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.”

ViVaRooney wrote:http://www.espn.co.uk/football/sport/story/108038.html?CMP=OTC-RSS

Uncle John from Jamaica wrote:Get the fuck in!

ViVaRooney wrote:we dont have a first team, you saying if berba played we would be weakened? this team would be more then enough:

Lindergaard

Fabio
Evans
Jones
Evra (he plays every game )

Valencia
Carrick
Fletcher
Park

Berba
Welbeck/Owen

with the likes of rooney on the bench. nat bad and it isnt our "1st choice" team

LiamB_14 wrote:My friends, Wenger first mentioned Dimitar Berbatov when talking about United's "experienced" players that didn't play last weekend.

I think this suggests that Wenger also views Berbatov as a stunning individual, as he sounded gobsmacked that a player of the quality of berbatov was left out of the starting line up

LiamB_14 wrote:My friends, Wenger first mentioned Dimitar Berbatov when talking about United's "experienced" players that didn't play last weekend.

I think this suggests that Wenger also views Berbatov as a stunning individual, as he sounded gobsmacked that a player of the quality of berbatov was left out of the starting line up

Jamieb08 wrote:i can see Welbeck starting again tbh, don't think Chicharito is quite ready for starting yet.

VivaRonaldo wrote:fuckin get in Leeds away hahahhahahhaahah