the other 9 clubs who aren't allowed to pay transfer fees between clubs for players. I don't mind people saying "good on city" but for fairness sake you need to either close the loophole, or scrap the "no transfer" rule. I'm in favour of scrapping it personally, it seems to me to be one of those legacy rules that is past its date of usefulness.
The best way out of a financial hole for clubs like CCM and Newcastle is to sell players. Who is going to buy them? The only teams with cash that would pay are Melbourne, Melbourne and Sydney. CCM and Newcastle wont want to sell them cheap so then you have a situation of a club selling a player they may not want to sell but are also not prepared to sell him cheap and the only clubs that could pay over the line are 3.
Its an antiquated rule I agree but the there is also the other side of it which *could* skew the competition even further.
Lets say Melbourne City pays $200k for Caceres and he signs a 4 year deal, 50k of the transfer fee should be included every season. So if you go around buying other sides players, you effectively have less salary cap.