Manchester City News: Champions League Headache with transfer of Eliaquim Mangala imminent

Free-spending English side Manchester City will have to streamline their current squad to meet restrictions for Champions League participation with Alvaro Negredo, Javi Garcia and Matija Nastasic all in the line of possible offloading.

Manuel Pellegrini’s men will have an extra overseas player in their squad when the transfer of Eliaquim Mangala from Portuguese side Porto is finalized, so they need to chop one of the players from the team to meet the Premier League restriction of 17.

And even if City sell one in the afore-mentioned trio, one more player will be facing exclusion from the club’s Champions League squad which will be limited to a maximum of 16 overseas players for the coming season because of a punishment slapped on City for the breach of financial fair-play rules.

Negredo and Garcia may be the unlucky Manchester City stars who are currently deemed surplus by the requirements because Nastasic – though foreign – still qualifies in the max-16-or-17 squad through another clause that allows under 21 players to feature. But this clause can only apply for this coming season alone because by the time of start of the 2015/2016 season, he will already have turned 22.

The young-star is also in line to be sold by the club so he may not after all wait for the 2015/2016 season when he will be in the same pool of counting in the overseas quota as Negredo and Garcia.

Jack Rodwell, Micah Richards and Scott Sinclair have one foot in City and the other in the transfer market and are therefore up for grabs from any interested club as the Citizens look to prune their current squad.

Gareth Barry and Joleon Lescott have already left after their contracts with Manchester City came to an end after the close of last season.

If the English champions will be able to attract a good price for those foreign players, they may raise more transfer funds that could help them launch a second bid for England young star Ross Barkley who is currently at Everton.

But the English side’s headache gets more complicated considering the fact that their transfer spending had been capped at only 49 million pounds for this summer by financial fair-play penalties. The arrival of Mangala (32 million), Fernando Reges (12 million) and Bruno Zuculini (1.5 million) has so far taken them closer to that limit.