One of the first things I have been trying to get my head around at San Diego is the difference between what a player costs and what a player really costs in MLS. Hirving Lozano is probably the best example in the squad. He is 35 now, earning $2.07m a year, carrying Designated Player status and coming off a season in which he managed only 724 league minutes.

• Per year: $2,070,000
• Per week: ~$39,808
• Per day: ~$5,671
• Per hour: ~$236
• Per minute: ~$3.94

The return was three goals and two assists from 7 starts and 16 substitute appearances, with a 6.82 average rating. There is still obvious quality there – 15 first touch, 14 finishing, 14 passing, 14 technique, 16 flair – but the physical decline is equally obvious, particularly with 9 pace, 5 stamina and 3 strength.

The strange thing about MLS accounting is that the $2.07m wage is not the number that matters most for the salary cap. Lozano’s current cap impact is only $440k, because he is occupying one of the club’s three Designated Player slots. That makes him far less damaging to the cap than the salary initially suggests, but it creates a different problem: one of the most valuable mechanisms available to an MLS club is being used on a 35-year-old who was effectively a rotation player last season. A DP does not necessarily need to be the best-paid player in the squad, but I do want those three places occupied by players capable of significantly raising the level of the team.

There is also the wider wage-budget issue. MLS salary-cap gymnastics might protect us from the full $2.07m hit, but the club still has to pay the contract. Lozano is earning more than almost everybody else here while producing fewer than 800 league minutes, and alongside Anders Dreyer he accounts for a huge proportion of the actual first-team wage bill. With San Diego sitting on plenty of money this is hardly an existential problem, but it is exactly the sort of legacy commitment that can make a squad look much more expensive than it actually is on the pitch.

Ordinarily this would leave me with an awkward first decision: try to trade him, hope somebody takes the salary, potentially retain some money, or simply accept that one DP slot is effectively locked for another season. Fortunately, I do not actually have to solve the problem. Lozano has already decided to leave when his contract expires at the end of December. There will be no extension, no complicated trade and no need to manufacture a market for a declining 35-year-old on more than $2m a year. The contract simply disappears.

He is not the only one. Anders Dreyer, Mohamed Farsi, Artem Smolyakov, Shane van Aarle and Daniel are also leaving when their deals expire. Between those six players, roughly $6.37m a year in actual wages comes off the books, while their current combined salary-cap impact is around $1.66m. Dreyer and Lozano also vacate two of the three DP slots, while Smolyakov frees the club’s only occupied U22 Initiative place.

There are losses in there. Dreyer was arguably San Diego’s best performer last season and Farsi played more than 2,600 minutes, so this is not simply clearing out unwanted contracts. But from a squad-building point of view the timing could hardly be better. I have arrived just as a large chunk of the previous version of San Diego reaches the end of the road, without having to spend the first transfer window trying to dismantle it myself.

So the answer to how you solve a problem like Hirving Lozano turns out to be pleasantly simple. You wait two weeks and let the contract expire.