I don't think appearance of inactive transfer market is not directly related to new version. In general, the transfer market is less active on club level raises. I also suffered very inactive market in the past. I used to force one of my legend like high scoring AML/ML to retire through selling him to an agent, and also sold some players close to next star to agent. Now transfer markets I face are at least not unreasonable.

For my markets, selling players in 2nd half season is a very difficult task. If you still have players to sell, be quick.

For selling players in season beginning, some managers like myself focus on norgens on Day 1 & 2 (but I seldom place bids because I am now a strictly 35T only manager). In my opinion, the best time to sell players are Day 3 or 4. At that time, no. of norgens decreases. Some managers start to build their team after league drawing.