Owen Hargreaves was pencilled in some time last week to play in last night’s reserve game against Manchester City but was withdrawn with United saying, “It definitely isn’t another injury setback. It just doesn’t fit in with Owen’s training schedule.”

Hmmm… why announce that he would feature in it last week then?

Besides, having not played for well over 18 months and having been back in training for several weeks now (according to reports coming from Manchester United) I would have thought that a game is exactly what he needs at this stage.

It is looking more and more like United have just written him off for the rest of this season now. He is not part of the Champions League squad and even if he played in all nine of our remaining Premier League matches and we won the title, he wouldn’t get a winners medal and Fergie obviously feels that with Giggs, Scholes, Fletcher, Carrick, Park, Nani, Valencia and Gibson, he has plenty of options in midfield.

It’s like they have said, “He might as well just continue to work on strength and fitness, he can play the pre-season friendlies and we’ll take it from there.”

The problem is that by that time, he will have been out for the best part of two years and this has to raise serious questions about how good he will be when/if he returns.

Incidentally, the Reserve match against City ended 2-2 with United taking a 2-0 lead only for City to peg them back.