Again, the statements you make about the 5th place now suddenly being the best (as with the earlier statements that the 5th place was the worst), are made without sufficient information or with concluding wrong things out of the current information.
If teams decide to lose games in order to finish 5th instead of 3rd or 4th, that's solely because they fail to plan their economy further than two weeks and only look at the short term, instead of planning your cashflows longterm just as basically every other strategy like training. As a manager, I'd be happy to see my surrounding teams make bad choices and give me the 3rd or 4th spot in order to finish 5th. Maybe I'd even be able to win a title once then!
Dunno what info we are missing, there is something that BBs know and all the others not?
There are 3 voices green in the economy; TV contract (no link to this discussion), merchandising and home game income.
I've never seen merchandising dropped suddenly also because this is not related to the positon of the team in the championship and the home game that I really don't know what write here cause in the playoff we split the incomes. I think you're trying to say to me that if you finish 4th you'll have a benefit in the new season but pls don't kidding me, we have enough experience to know that that's not true, a different of one position above all at the end of the season is irrilevant.
I agree with you about the training is a pity to train 2 players instead of 3 but there are other quite useful training at the end of the season like stamina of FT. If you think that 1 position missing worths 400k, good I can accept your idea, personally 1 position missing doesn't worth more than 50-100k. About the possibility to win the championship again, have a look to the teams that starting from the 4th position have won the tournament, I say a number that for me should be realistic, only 10% of the teams are able to win the away playoff game. Of couse I'm taling about top teams, in a VI division the economic differences are too low, but in usa, nederland, germany and so on we are talking about hundreds k
1990-2022 Stalinorgel - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pV-Xppl6h8Et