The Best Team Won

A Tale of 2 Owens July 11, 2009

Manchester United’s 2009/2010 season might just be shaped by the fortunes of Michael Owen and Owen Hargreaves, both men largely written off or forgotten by the football community. Hargreaves would be the focus of this post as I have already talked about Owen in a previous post.

By and large, Hargreaves was off the radar for the whole of last season. The rise and rise of Darren Fletcher meant that his absence went largely unnoticed. It would take the last game of United’s season that his name would be mentioned again. United’s midfield was completely over-run by Barcelona’s fab 2 of Xavi and Iniesta. This was a game where Hargreaves might have excelled in, with his terrier-like ball winning skills. He might not have the distribution of Carrick or the tenacity of Fletcher. But in a game where Barcelona players were playing ping pong around United’s midfielders, Owen’s sense of urgency and nimbleness would have proved invaluable. Of course, it would still be daft to suggest that the inclusion of Owen would have changed the result. Barcelone were playing football from another planet.

The 2007/2008 season in which United won the Champions League was a turning point for United in terms of their European fortunes. It was a season in which United were finally showing signs of being able to hold their own on European soil. And Hargreaves was large part of that. Ferguson plainly admitted that he was brought in to give United more of a tactical advantage in Europe by operating in a five-man midfield.

With the injured Hargreaves out of the picture last season, Ferguson began toying with the idea of playing Cristiano Ronaldo upfront, with Rooney on the wing. This was employed with devastating effect against Arsenal in the 2nd leg of the Champions League semi-final. So enamoured was Ferguson of his newfound tactic that he was convinced that it would be equally effective against Barcelona.

With Ronaldo gone, and with the healthy (hopefully) return of Hargreaves, Ferguson might just be able to return to a more effective albeit conservative European strategy.