Hi,
wondering if this is a new thing, but why are the players I want to buy, all signing a 1 year contract and preventing me from buying them?

I know I need to wait 72 turns, which I did. I tried to buy, denied, I shoulda offered more I guess. Then a few turns later, they screw me buy signing a 1 year contract, even thought they had a year or more left on their existing contract.

Is this a thing now?

I assume you are talking about forced transfers, right? The behaviour you described has been there since the inception of this feature. Every time a forced transfer attempt fails the player contract gets renewed.

This is done to avoid multiple attempts to the same player with an increasingly higher offer until the right price is found. I know each manager has to wait 6 turns for a new attempt, but you could easily team up with others to force transfer players together, and that’s what we are trying to prevent.