Sensible post although Hargreves has never impressed me, even in the days when Bayern collected trophies for fun. After all so has Nicky Butt when we were champions after champions.
And for me Hargreves was absolute culprit for that 1st Arsenal goal. He shouldn't left Frabegras completely free when Anderson's harassing others. Bad positional sense defensivewise for a supposedly ultra-defensive player. If he marked Fabregras but Hleb (?) managed to pass the ball to someone else to attack and score, it won't be Hargreaves's fault. Simple as that.
But I hope I'm proved wrong about him very soon.
I presume you are talking about the build-up when OH gets close to, but not in time to challenge, the Arse player centrally positioned outside the area and about to spray the ball wide?
If you back-track a bit you'll see where the play develops in the left side of Arsenal's defense as they break out - Brown starts racing back but heads inside - which means OH heads outwards to block the ball to the unmarked man on the wing, having to rely on Brown and others inside for the moment.
That unfortunately means it's a little too far for him to make ground up as Arsenal manouvre the ball towards the centre in attack. Brown's run effectively dictated where OH had to go so I don't see this as much of a criticism of OH tbh.
(PS that's all from memory - hope it's accurate guys.)
Whilst there's plenty of useful cut & thrust and debating points made in this thread, let's make one suggestion:
People claiming you pretty much have to play Carrick & Scholes together this year because we won last year are making basically the same point as the other side pointing out that OH has done well in his injury-free periods prior to joining the club and therefore deserves to play. Both are quoting from fine records of achievement to say that the player concerned is good enough and deserves to play. Banging on about how you're right and the other side aren't on this topic is rather counter-productive.
So: 2 pro-Hargreaves points:
People watching recent games involving OH should have noticed a couple of excellent long passes rather than just the stereotyped 'wandering around lost followed by a defensive pass much later which slowed us all down' tripe that gets peddled by his opponents.
Carrick really took quite a long time last season (when he played regularly) to actually develop into the type of player he became for us - too many posters seem determined not to give OH the same license - probably because, being more defensively-oriented, he really cannot be suited to a Utd team (in their eyes.)
