LTJ
your salary floor is zero , and thats one advantage of new managers, you only pay the exact salary of your current players and not the league's salary floor. this is possible for the your first few weeks as a manager.
i am only in my 4th season, and i rebuilt my team on season 3. ( i joined mid season 1, spent all my money buying old players with decent skill sets) , then won my league in just my second season, but my core players were all 34 yrs old and up. Once i got promoted to division 3, i rudely found out that my core players were not enough, so i sold them while i still can, and started buying 18 to 20 year old players, so i tanked division 3 to get back to division 4. but the bigger economy of division 3 enabled me to build my arena to about an additional 1000 seats while i was being killed in division 3.
now am back to division 4, with an arena 0f 6500 ( and still building), having 4 great trainees ages 19 and 20, and loving to train the right way, as BB really emphasizes. I could go back to division 3 again after this season, but now i stick to my young players, get killed again in season 5 of division 3, while building my arena to at least the 8500 seat level.
Then go back down to division 4 again in season 6, with a monster arena of at least 10000 by season 6' end, and with my 4 trainees on skill sets of 12 to 15 on their primaries and having acceptable secondary skills, thus by season 7 when i go back up to division 3 i am staying their for good, up to the 10th season where i can now contend to win division 3 and aiming for division 2.
so as you can see, take your losses and lumps, Passionate players like you will last in this game, new players who quickly losses focus, no matter how smart or passionate they may be in the start is not fitted for BB.
we grow trees for manager in BB, not mushrooms who pop after a thunderstorm and withers thereafter.