There was a time when not attending and training your team had a consequence, you can't deny that. I had the same rival for the first 5 seasons playing TE. While I managed to win the leagues every direct match was exciting and hard since we both had very similar teams. In the 5th season he won the 1st game 1-0, then he stopped playing ,the returning match I won 7-1 (despite he had a great team the fact that he stopped taking care made him lose with this results). As far as I'm concerned these artificially strong abandoned teams are a relatively new addition to the game, an addition that makes no sense.