This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how successful NRL rosters are built. It's not basketball - very rarely does adding one guy make a huge difference. It's much more about having at least 25 players who can come in and be first grade standard. That's what Melbourne have, and it's why they're winning finals games without $3m of cap money including their star half on the field. They didn't sign Shawn Blore to be a "difference maker", they signed him to do a job.
The Tigers' best players are fine and the roster is the youngest in the comp - natural improvement from experience should make a significant difference. The problem we have is that as soon as anyone gets injured or loses form there's nothing to come in and replace them. Brent Naden played eight games this year, Charlie Murray played five, Tony Sukkar 15, Jack Bird 17, Charlie Staines 7, Heath Mason 7 - and we didn't have major injury concerns. With the greatest respect to players who I'm sure are doing their best, those guys don't get a game at the Storm unless they have about 20 injuries. They're next in line at the Tigers.
When people talk about "depth" they don't mean signing another Jack Bird. They mean signing Shawn Blore so that when Sam Fainu gets injured we don't have to play Jack Bird.
The club has been highly active at moving on players they don't need anymore and I'm sure it will continue to do so, but the reality is the bulk of that work has now been done. Yes, I'm sure they'd be delighted if someone came and took Royce Hunt off the books with no freight or Jack Bird walked away from the last year of his contract. But it is what it is, and there aren't many clubs with no bad deals on the books. On that front, actually I don't think we're in too bad a position.
On that basis, it sounds like we have a small amount of cap room for 2026 and limited likelihood of increasing it. If that's true, I'd rather the money was spent on three legitimate first grade depth players so Heath Mason and Tony Sukkar never get picked again than one "difference maker" who isn't currently available so would inevitably end up being a Hail Mary desperation heave like Asofa-Solomona.