This is not a problem for new and developing teams. This is a good thing for those teams who are seeking to bridge the gap. It means that the prices for better players now is far lower than it has been previously. Those teams who avoided those large purchases and chose to invest their coin into facilities and team development are reaping the benefits of that now. Those players who looked for the market deals and the free players are getting the best out of the market.
With all respect, if you think that hiring LA7 players at lower values you will be "reducing the gap", you are completely wrong. For bigger clubs, a LA7/LA8 player is an average player (or garbage for others) that can fill the squad as a sub (at most).
There are "some" LA9 players for less than 2M, but their age is usually high or their PR is surely low, have them maxed without premium account and without playing WCC will take more than 3 seasons, and in 3 seasons, a CA9 player will probably be close to an average player for bigger clubs.
Next season, if things are similar than this season, i will surely sell more "LA7/8 garbage", i will collect around 3M or 4M for them (depending their CA) and with some extra money i will surely hire a CA9 or CA10 player to strenghten a squad position (were a CA8 player plays now), how can a weak team become closer to me if he improves his squad in 1 LA level (or 2) if i do the same? Not to menction that any player that i might buy will probably be NT player, so his experience will be increasing faster than the LA7's, i don't see any gap decreasing, do you?
What can make things balanced? High wages and low incomes, but in 3 seasons a squad filled with CA8/9 players only won't be able to challenge bigger clubs, they are also improving after all. For me, there is a bigger problem in the finances stuff at "big level". For non premium users it will be close to impossible. The 30k-40k extra from custom cup games and around 70k extra from activities is too much money, enough money to keep a big substitute player list (10 CA7 players) or 4 or 5 CA10 players (wage betwen 20k and 30k) as backup or to strenghten the main squad.
The incomes from facilities formula doesn't provide a fair relationship between investment/income, so there is no chance to match the finances between premium and non premium: Improving megastore from Very Good to The Best level cost 5M, incomes increases from 35k-40k to 50k-60k (and rating x 0.5 extra) but expenditures increases another 10k (from 10k to 20k) so the "max" profit is ((60k-35k)+(rating x 0,5))-10k.
It might sound compliated, let's say your rating is 7k, how much extra would you get after spending 5M?((60k-35k)+(7k x 0,5)-10k=
18,5kIn other words, if you speak about finances, there is no "balance" or "managerial skill" that can match a premium account. Just being premium, playing custom cup games and doing some activities each day you can get more than 120k extra each week, what "managerial skill" can you use against it?
There are some posibilities, but any team taking one of those will surely become less competitive. The easiest solution for a team like that is reducing their squad to 16 players, having many players able to play in more than 1 position, but you need at least 6 extra players to avoid losing tactical strenght (FC, AMR/C/L, MR/C/L, DMR/C/L, DR/L and DC) but you don't need to be the startest manager in the world to realize that an MC must have different abilities than an MR/L, so you will be losing strenght anyway.
Market is crazy not only because players are sold too cheap, it's dying because the offer is too big.
5 seasons ago, a high LA player (let's say LA7) was found for around 2M-3M, as i pointed earlier, a LA9 player is in that range now. A LA7 player now is similar than a LA5 player 5 seasons ago. The quality gap still exist, the problem is that people doesn't have money to hire quality and there are too many teams selling average players, for me, the only solution is to reduce the number of players in market, setting a limit of players you can sell each season would be a good start. I don't think that people would get more money for a LA7 player than now, just because there are less crappy players than now, because nobody aiming to develop a decent squad buys LA5/6 players anyway. The "average player" will be sold at average values, the potentially good player will be sold at good money and the star players will be sold for millions, that won't change IMHO.
