There's no evidence that we're being cheap, we're using our full overseas quota and the foreigners we've hired all have a good pedigree. While we're signing a lot of unproven players in the A-League there's just not many good proven and performing Ausies on the market right now.
If the Phoenix do end up being under the cap then that's not necessarily a bad thing in a rebuild year as you can allocate the cap that you saved to the following year and increase the cap temporarily.