Why Manchester City Will Not Regret Letting Alvaro Negredo Go

Manchester City will not regret letting Alvaro Negredo go because, no matter how well Negredo plays for any of his subsequent clubs, the decision to sell Negredo was the right decision when City made it.

City bought Negredo from Sevilla in the summer of 2013 for a reported fee of "£16.4 million plus add-ons of up to £4.2 million" per Ben Curtis of the Mirror.

Negredo's only season in a City kit started very brightly and ended very badly:

The fate of "the Beast" may have been sealed by the metatarsal fracture he picked up in a July friendly with Hearts of Midlothian. The injury, which will continue to sideline Negredo into next month, cost Negredo in two significant ways.

First, Negredo would be unable to prove to City manager Manuel Pellegrini that his unproductive and injury-riddled 2014 to date could be overcome. Second, forgotten man Stevan Jovetic received almost all of the minutes Negredo would have played in City's remaining preseason matches.

Neither Negredo nor Jovetic likely knew how the Montenegrin would seize on that opportunity.

Jovetic was prolific through the summer, but the real splash came with his brace against Liverpool that led the Sky Blues to a 3-1 victory on Aug. 25.

The Negredo sale became official six days later.

Rui Vieira/Associated Press

No one associated with City would ever admit or even suggest that the emergence of Jovetic led directly to Negredo becoming expendable. City really did not need to say it.

Further enhancing City's desire to move Negredo was the fact that there was still a live market for the striker's services. Per the Daily Mail's Jack Gaughan, Sami Mokbel and Simon Jones, Negredo's transfer was worth "£25 million plus add-ons of £2 million" to a club with widely known Financial Fair Play problems.

No advanced mathematical skills are required to see that City thus turned a profit on the sale of a player who was injured when they sold him and unlikely to feature even after he healed.

Supporters who fear things that bump in the night point to the iffy health of City's primary striker, Sergio Aguero, as well as the fact that Jovetic was limited with assorted knocks for much of last season. Keeping Negredo would be insurance against an injury to the others, they reason.

But there is another transfer window coming in a few months, and Negredo was not likely to be fully fit or to reclaim a place in Pellegrini's rotation before the end of 2014 anyway.

Perhaps the primary factor clouding the wisdom of the deal for City supporters is how fond they were of Negredo when he was in the midst of his goal binge through the end of 2013.

We learned, though, that as much as the blue side of Manchester may have loved Negredo, the feeling may not have been so mutual.

"Negredo and his family have struggled to settle in England and his form became affected by homesickness and a shoulder injury to such an extent that he failed to hit the target in the final four months of the campaign," reported Simon Mullock in the Mirror.

Summing up, then, City sold a player whose form had left him and whose commitment to living in Manchester was in some question. City sold that player while he was injured and for a profit.

The key to successful management of any enterprise, be it a football club or any other competitive endeavor, is the ability to make difficult decisions intelligently and then not to look back.

City should never regret selling Negredo because, for all of the foregoing reasons, it was the right thing to do when they did it.