Manchester City are convinced the England midfielder is fit despite his dismal injury record
Manchester's billboards will not incite a feud this time. Just as there was no "Fergie, Fergie, sign him up" appeal as Owen Hargreaves approached his sad but inevitable end at Old Trafford, so the chant is unlikely to develop into a taunt from Manchester City even if the midfielder's knees do function again. It is a cross-city defection that intrigues more than infuriates and, also unlike the Carlos Tevez affair, it is a move that suits everyone involved.
For Hargreaves, the call from a club targeting both Premier League and Champions League success justifies that desperate fitness advertisement on YouTube and his prevaricating over a good offer to resurrect his career at West Bromwich Albion.
His last competitive appearance lasted all of five minutes against Wolverhampton Wanderers in November 2010. It ended with England's player of the 2006 World Cup (a minuscule field, admittedly) in tears inside the Old Trafford dressing room with, as became the norm during his four years with United, only a physiotherapist for company. Hamstring torn, calf torn, faint hopes of a contract extension from Sir Alex Ferguson in tatters.
The 30-year-old recently claimed he offered to play for free for United this season. Ferguson had good reason to decline and to release a player refreshingly lacking in ego, but whose determination to impress ? whether as a teenager arriving at Bayern Munich from Canada or as an established international who arrived at United with an �18m price tag and a serious injury ? ultimately cost him the peak years of his career.
Hargreaves made 18 league starts for United in four seasons. He has made only five competitive first-team appearances in three years ? 182 minutes in total ? and his last 90-minute outing came in a 1-1 draw at Stamford Bridge in September 2008. Since that day at Chelsea, a game that left his troubled knees so rigid he was unable to drive for three days, Hargreaves's United career amounts to six minutes ? as a last-minute substitute at Sunderland in May 2010 and the ill-fated start against Wolves later that year.
The exasperation in Ferguson's voice increased when asked about United's forgotten midfielder last season. He had utmost sympathy for a player with chronic patellar tendinitis, a condition that left Hargreaves's knees in the poorest state that the surgeon Dr Richard Steadman, a world-renowned specialist who has saved the careers of a number of players including Alan Shearer, claims to have witnessed in 35 years. But it is believed the player's own choice of medical treatment caused disquiet at United. There were also suggestions that the United manager feared Hargreaves's physical battle had taken a mental toll too.
There is room for a midfielder with Hargreaves's attributes in the United squad but not, as Ferguson stated during their farewell conversation, if he obstructs the emergence of younger, fitter rivals. Tom Cleverley's development is the latest vindication of Ferguson's outlook and Ryan Tunnicliffe, now taking the loan route via Peterborough United, is further down the production line.
The United manager would not have allowed City's interest to influence his decision had he been aware of it. Any questions must be directed at those who signed off Hargreaves's medical in 2007, the player having damaged a patellar tendon at Bayern the previous season, and already have been.
City's offer is reward for Hargreaves's refusal to concede defeat following surgery on both knees, for his daily efforts at Carrington and global search for a solution to the pain. Through a friend, the basketball star Steve Nash, he got in touch with the LA Lakers' former athletic performance coordinator, Alex McKechnie, and spent a month at his clinic in Vancouver performing "movement re-education" exercises for three hours a day. Ferguson was so impressed by Hargreaves on his return that he elected to start him against Wolves. He would not wear the United shirt again.
City officials are adamant the 30-year-old is in good condition, as were Albion, and in Roberto Mancini's search for inexpensive cover for the holding midfielder Nigel De Jong, Hargreaves represents a risk worth taking.
The two parties are negotiating the structure of a one-year contract at the Etihad Stadium and he is unlikely to tip City over the edge of Uefa's financial fair play regulations. Unlike at other Premier League clubs, City have the resources to use Hargreaves sparingly.
The question the transfer raises for Hargreaves and City is not why, but why not?
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2011/aug/30/owen-hargreaves-manchester-city
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