Ferguson:
"Owen will bring speed and energy to our midfield.
"His experience in Europe and the speed at which he covers the ground will make our midfield very strong, particularly defending against the counterattack. He has great defensive awareness and he also has bags of European experience after seven years at Bayern, which is magnificent for a man as young as him."
Gary Neville:
"Owen is an extremely solid person. If you give him a job to do he will do it. He won't lose concentration during a match."
The Guardian:
Ferguson has certainly recruited a sturdy character, given the way Hargreaves was booed by England fans at the start of the World Cup and responded with such valour and enterprise that he was eventually named as the supporters' player of the tournament. At Bayern he held his own when the famously confrontational goalkeeper Oliver Kahn singled him out for criticism, and those who know him best say he has a quality that Ferguson always appreciates - the ability to respond positively to adversity rather than feeling sorry for himself.
Take the summer of 2003, for instance, when Kicker, the German football magazine, and Sport Bild, the highest-circulation sports newspaper in Europe, previewed the forthcoming Bundesliga season by printing Bayern's projected first XI. Hargreaves was completely overlooked, with Kicker predicting the midfield quartet would be Jens Jeremies, Michael Ballack, Sebastian Deisler and Ze Roberto while Bild included Mehmet Scholl instead of Deisler.