Hargreaves - one signing too many?

choiboyx012

yes he did, got pointless yellow/red cards too

Red Indian Chief Torn Rubber

Quit making a fool of yourself. Carrick hasn't been injured for quite a while now. Yet he is still second choice behind Hargreaves.

Red Indian Chief Torn Rubber

Worse. Makelele is a great playmaker. Chelsea's main man according to Mozza. Just as good a passer as Carrick.

It makes me want to hurl just thinking about it...

Chapster

Carrick is a confidence player and he needs a run of games to start getting back in the groove. It's hard to deny that he hasn't had a good run of games until now.

Red Indian Chief Torn Rubber

He isn't getting a run of games because he isn't better than Hargreaves. It's that simple. Harqreaves has even got injured more often. than Carrick. But once fit he gets straight back into the side. It's not by mistake that it happens. People just don't want to accept the blatantly obvious truth.

Julian Denny

Chief, I still see Carrick and OH as very different players. I don't think for one minute Fergie bought OH with the sole intention of alternating him with Carrick. Of course, it works out in some games that that will indeed happen but in the important ones the best option is to play both and I'm sure that was and maybe still is Fergie's vision of things. The problem is who makes way if both play and what formation do we play ? I've expressed my views on that ad nauseam !

Carrick has qualities which OH doesn't have and vice versa. I see them as entirely complimentary.

Ekeke

Cease, dear

Seeing as I'm here to debate football with someone else who actually knows a thing or two about it and can do so without playground insults, I'll just respond in kind with "No u" and forget that I wasted my pixels in response to your keyboard puke.

Red Indian Chief Torn Rubber

I agree with you that they are complimentary. Plus on most things on this issue. We only differ on whether Hargreaves is limited or not...

Anyways, as someone said earlier: Carrick's current dilemma has been brought about by Anderson's center midfield form. I personally thought Anderson would take over from Giggs at wide left, due to being too in experienced to and young to be used in center midfield . Leaving Carrick to be first choice cover for and injured Scholes. Leaving Hargreaves to be covered by Fletcher. But Anderson has proved me wrong in that. Personally I wish we could start Hargreaves and Carrick together with Anderson just behind Rooney. Flanked by Tevez on the right and Ronaldo on the left. I'm certain that is our strongest possible formation and side. With Scholes missing.... I have no doubt that long term Hargreaves and Carrick would be an excellent partnership together. Given a run of a few games.

Red Indian Chief Torn Rubber

You really don't know when to stop spilling BS ad nauseam. You know zilch when it comes to football. Your calling Hargreaves a liability already condemned you and confirmed your abject ignorance on the subject.

You just keep proving why you have the tag line you have. For there's no such thing as "keyboard puke"

Ekeke

Irony being you're the 'chief muppet' based on your football ideas (oh dear) and I got my tagline because I insulted some celebrity Giggsgirl was drooling over.

Hargreaves is not a really a liability, just a player who doesn't suit our play (and is not needed in 90% of our matches during the course of the season.) You however, are

Julian Denny

Comparisons are odious but if you are comparing Hargeaves with say a Robson or a Keane, then he could be described as limited but that's fine because he will do a specific job for us and I think do it very well - if given the opportunities. That's not to say he won't develop as a player at United and perhaps expand his repertoire more.

One of the main benefits of OH is that he releases Anderson (or Scholesy) to do more on the creative side and less on the defensive. That will certainly be important when PS returns - tackling has never been his forte and will not improve as he gets older either. Asking him to cover defensively is a waste of his talent. With OH and also Carrick of course, that requirement will be less imperative. Same with Anderson although he does seem to have a penchant for winning the ball. What I want to see though is more of that incisive passing and some cracking goals from the young man. OH in the side makes that more likely.

Plechazunga

In practice oblique cases are only usually talked about in languages that mark them with a change to the word in question - in other words, when it's a felt aspect of the language. English only does this in the accusative and genitive of pronouns.

Re the ablative, that would cover some of the uses of 'whom', but not all. If you were using the case terminology you might include the dative (to whom, for whom), locative (in whom), and instrumental (with whom, by whom). The Latin ablative was a fusion of the the old Indo-European locative and instrumental, but the normal use of the ablative in linguistics is (I think) for movement away from.

But the point is, none of those cases are marked in English nouns, so the use of case terminology isn't really appropriate. It's far easier to say, "use 'whom' after a preposition". It's still used in those positions colloquially, much more than it is in the accusative. But even there it's on the way out - in the more normal construction, where you put the relative pronoun first and delay the pronoun till the end of the sentence, people almost always use 'who', not 'whom'.

eg "Let's stop banging on about grammar, and get back to Owen Hargreaves, who the thread was actually about"

rather than

"Let's stop banging on about grammar, and get back to Owen Hargreaves, whom the thread was actually about"

or this, which is barely comprehensible:

"Let's stop banging on about grammar, and get back to Owen Hargreaves, about whom the thread actually was"

If you insist on using "preposition + whom", you really have to recast the sentence as something like,

"Let's stop banging on about grammar, and get back to Owen Hargreaves, with whom the thread was actually concerned"

But why bother?

Mozza

Bollocks frankly, only applies in a 433 and we don't play that formation.

MadDogg

The problem is that he also 'releases' the opposition to focus a lot more attention on that midfield partner (whether it be Anderson, Scholes or Carrick) as they know Hargreaves isn't really going to hurt them. As long as one person goes to him to stop him dribbling too far (even then there isn't much end product), the others can just watch the creative players close around him that he'll invariably try to give the ball to.

A big reason for Scholes' fantastic form last season was because he had someone next to him who could relieve the pressure. No matter how hard the opposition closed Scholes down, Carrick's positional sense meant he was almost always on hand to recieve the easy ball and then exploit the space that the opposition had vacated. And it's his positioning in attack that everybody seems to overlook. People talk about just his passing, or his fairly good defensive attributes. But one of his key abilities, perhaps even the most important one, is that he is always available to give the ball to. If an attacking move breaks down, Carrick is almost always in space somewhere where the ball can just be passed to him and he'll move it onto start the attack somewhere else. It sounds very simple and something that everybody should be able to do, but it's not (yet another Rio comparison where he does things so easily that people don't see it as skill).

Hargreaves doesn't give you that. He gives you other things and certainly has his time and place, but we simply won't hold onto possession so well with him in the team. Kind of like Heinze compared to Evra - Heinze was perhaps better defensively pre-injury, but he constantly gave the ball back to the opposition with his terrible ball control and passing. And those extra chances he gave the opposition outweighed the slight increase in individual defensive ability. Hargreaves certainly isn't so bad in that department, but the argument is similar when comparing the effect the two players will have on the team generally.

ps. People bringing this years statistics into it are ridiculous. Actually watching the matches, Carrick was obviously in terrible form at the beginning of the year (also when Rooney and Ronaldo were out, which will make the stats look worse again), then just as he was starting to fire he got injured. Since he's been back he's been playing himself into form again, and has certainly been showing the last couple of matches that he's getting back into good form. Statistics won't show that, but eyes will.

Julian Denny

Gosh, I never knew that !

Julian Denny

You make valid points and that's why I've been going on about OH being best in a three man central midfield. He has Carrick to link up with directly allowing Anderson/Scholes to play their naturally positive roles better. I don't think OH is a natural replacement for Carrick unless of course it's against weaker opposition at OT where we can get away with it.

Red Indian Chief Torn Rubber

You wish. It was based on people on ehre not liking my straight talking.. and the fact I stick to view that are far from popular amongst the majority of caftards at the time. Like my statements about Hargreaves being a superior holding midfielder to Carrick. OR that Viic and Evra will come good. Heck even when I've been proved right time and again it still hasn't changed..go figure...

Wishful thinking. It was got for being what it describes. Seen in a lot of your posts unfortunately. This thread being a prime example..Of you posting without thinking...


Why the change of view? Have you realised how bad it is to make oneself look real stupid fore not other reason than pure stubbornness?

Or did you fall and bump your head? Meaning you are not quite your real self anymore...

Red Indian Chief Torn Rubber

Too true.

Shotgun raisin

Fair enough, that sounds about right. And the ablative I was talking about was actually the Latin form you referred to.

mehro

Because he's played more games doesn't make him a better player. Frankly I'm surprised that SAF's picked him over Carrick. From what I've seen of Hargreaves this season he's been somewhere between alright and quite shit. Rubbish first touch, mediocre passing abilities, can only run horizontally and a decent tackler.

choiboyx012

that's why he's SAF and you're not. he's not as blind as most ppl here to see his quality

Shotgun raisin

That simply isn't the case. In fact, for the first few games of the season when Scholes and Hargreaves started together, Scholes was the one who sat deep while Hargreaves ran around. If you remember, there was a lot of discussion around here about Scolesy's poor start to the season. I thought his backseat role to Hargreaves was partly to blame.

As for the Anderson/Hargreaves combo, neither seems overly concerned about holding position in the middle of the park when they don't have the ball. It hasn't really cost us against the crapper sides that we dominate, but Arsenal's first goal against us was a stark example of how it can go wrong.

Red Indian Chief Torn Rubber

It does. Especially since both have been fit at the same time. Unless you are trying to claim Fergie is deliberately sabotaging his team. Which is too stupid an idea...

You are more blind than a bat then. Thank God Fergie is the manager and not you. For most of what you've said about Hargreaves is utter lies and bullshit frankly.