Manchester city have revealed that they will not be offering a new contract to former Manchester United midfielder Owen Hargreaves, who has been part of the title winning team this season.
Manchester city stunned the Premier league world by announcing the signing of Owen Hargreaves this season in order to make up for the lack of quality defensive midfielders at the club. It was a strange decision by Manchester city given that Hargreaves was just released from Manchester United after failing to recover from his injury problems.
The Canadian born England international has suffered a number of knee injuries in recent seasons, which has limited him to a handful of starts in the last few years.
It was quite clearly a gamble by Roberto Mancini to take on Hargreaves into the squad. He has played just four matches for City this season. It is now expected that the midfielder will announce his retirement from the game after failing to make any progress in the last three years to come back fit. The midfielder was a £ 17 million signing from Bayern Munich for Manchester United a few years ago. He made a just 18 league starts for Manchester United in three seasons before moving on.
“We took a gamble on Owen because he was such a fantastic player. We thought we could try to get him fit in two or three months and then he would be able to play. But it hasn’t worked out quite like that. When you have a player who hasn’t played for two years and he starts to train every day there are small problems all the time. Problems in the knees or the hamstrings. So Owen hasn’t been able to play when we have needed him,” said Roberto Mancini regarding the decision on Owen Hargreaves.