Owen Hargreaves last comeback?

It looks like it pays to be sceptical if this report has any semblence of truth about it and i can't help thinking it's a more realistic assessment of where Owen Hargreaves career is at than some of the more optimistic updates which we keep getting are. All the known facts scream out that he will never play a serious role in football ever again. How many footballers or indeed how many sportsmen have come back from serious knee injury that has kept them out of their sport for more than two years.

As predicted the last thing on Ferdinand's mind is retiring from international football with England to prolong his career at club level as he rubbishes Hansen's advise to do just that. Well we better hope that Smalling is a fast learner, because Hansen was right.

Park admits he hasn't been playing well but vows to do better, the Mail rehash an old story. I might be wrong but i read somewhere he has picked up an injury and won't be playing against Japan for South Korea.

Solskjaer shows the kind of ambition and realism that makes United fans love him as he admits his ambition would be to manage United. But knows that he has a lot work to do and a lot to learn before he can get there.
Another Scandanavian great wishes he had given his United stay longer. Henrik Larsson enjoyed his stay at Old trafford and his one regret from his career is going back to Sweden when Fergie wanted him to stay at United.

Andersred blog man Andy Green talks to Beyond the pitch about last Friday's financial results.

With the numerous cock ups and poor crowds in India before and during the commonwealth games come more embarrassin news for sport in India. Shane Warne's Rajasthan royals and the kings x1 Punjab have had thei IPL licenses terminated as the civil war in Indian cricketblows wide open.


Timothy Garton Ash looks at the state of US politics and isn't impressed. Angry, polarised and gridlocked, it resembles Brehznev's Soveit Union when it needs to be more like Silicon valley. But he thinks that the country is starting to wake up to the Chinese threat. He asks what is it that your makes sink when you look at Washington, the answer must surely be money, and the way money talks in the US political system over the short term at the expense of the long term interest of both the people and the country.
Paul Mason talks to possible US presidential candidate for the republican 2012 contest Mitch Daniels about what direction the US needs to take to meet the challenges facing the country. I'm not exactly sure where he is cominf from after reading that, and if i'm not sure that must make him suspect to the rising influence of the tea party.
Gary Younge takes a look at the rise of the tea party and his conclusion is to wonder why the Democrats can't take this opportunity to shift the economy onto a more worker friendly path. He aslo wonders why US workers always seem to take political positions at odds with their own wellbeing.
Dana Milbank of the Washington post has taken a look at one of the tea party's leading lights Glenn Beck and detects a certain amount of hypocrisy, surprise, surprise.
California will go to the pools next month to decide whether to legalise canabis, well it would solve some of their budgetary problems. Bernd Debusmann finds that opponents aren't just based the usual suspects who still have faith on the war against and drugs but also the state's cannabis growers who fear losing money. Surely yet another good reason to legalise it.

Frank Furedi argues that new Labour is dead, but those who argue the party has moved back to the left under Ed Miliband have also got it wrong. As many others have argued many in the party are wary of where the party is heading. I would think that is because just as at the end of Thatcher's reign the tory party had come to almost totally embody her views just when the country had had its fill of her and them the every same thing has happened to the labour party. Hence why David Miliband would have won but for the unions and new labour miscalculation and complasceny. Mary Riddell hopes that Miliband was right in his choice of Johnson for the sake of the country.
I don't buy into Furedi's argument at all, if the tories really are determined to ruthlessly impose the cuts they are threatning to and we do enter a double dip or even worse an L shaped recession, there is every reason to believe we could see a labour or even a labour-lib dem coalition after the next election. There is all to play for as the fall out from the Browne report shows.
Iain Martin seems to side with those pundits that think Ed Miliband may have pulled of a bit of a masterstroke in appointinting Alan Johnson to oppose George Osborne at the despatch box.

Mark Gatiss whose A history of horror started last night is interviewed in the Guardian. What would the BBC do without him, he seems to have had the most success of all since the league of gentlemen hung up its boots for the time being.