they was still pretty expensiv, the big difference was in the 400k+ area. The player belowe 200k nearly didn't moved and betwen 200 and 300k it was 15-30k i would say. So you don't run around with several monster, also having two monster getting quite expensiv and maybe performed to win some chamiponship but they would stick longer to the teasm besides the strategy that you buy some monster just before important games.
I think a salary cap, around 300k won't hurt the game that much, and won't change the way you play it a lot(besides the NT levels, but still there germany beats lithuania with less effort through multiskills with around 60% of the salary in their starting 5) - so useless is something different.