Manchester City manager Manuel Pellegrini said Friday being forced to comply with UEFA's financial fair play rules had led to the loan exit of striker Alvaro Negredo.

Negredo returned to Spain by joining Valencia on transfer deadline after impressing at Eastlands following his arrival from Sevilla last year. However, City were under pressure to leave a frontline player out of their Champions League squad, reduced to 21 by European football governing body UEFA as a result of a failure to comply with financial fair play rules designed to stop clubs spending more tham they earn.

With Negredo out of action until the end of October with a broken foot bone, he was clearly in line to be shifted out of the Premier League champions squad by Pellegrini.

"The decision for Alvaro Negredo to go was for two very important reasons," Pellegrini said. "The first was that we have the restriction for the number of the players we can use in the Champions League. We had one player more, (and) we could not use Alvaro, who was injured, so he was the player who was not going to be on the list," the Chilean added.

"For him, it was very important because he wanted to go back to Spain, so I thought it was the best decision for the club. But it all starts from the restriction about the number of players. We have restrictions about the amount of players and the money we can spend."

In addition to the reduced squad, City were also fined £49 million and forced to limit their net pre-season spending to £49 million.

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