I can understand that refusing his choice of going to Barcelona might seem harsh, but he's there because we were desperate to get rid of him, and he was happy to use that as leverage.Nice way to treat players
A player should certainly have a lot of choice about what happens to them (and it's not too long ago that wouldn't have been the case), but if he wasn't so toxic, City wouldn't agree to a much less favourable option, when they probably could have got a fee from him elsewhere.