Player contract expires but team has to keep paying him until he moves to new club?

[rsihn]

As noted in the title, I've never understood why when a player's contract expires and he has agreed to join a new club, why does my club have to keep paying him until he joins the new club.  This isn't exclusive to FM24 as it has been this way as long as I can remember.

I'm managing in Finland.  Nearly all player contracts end on November 30 each year and I am not renewing the contract of this player as he is no longer needed.  He signs a contract with a new club but the transfer window doesn't open until January 17.  Once he signs the deal with the new club, I can't release him and have to keep paying his wages until January 17 despite him being out of contract and no longer wanted.  I can't imagine this playing out like this in the real world and clubs would be very eager to get this player off their books as soon as the contract expired but in FM, I'm stuck paying his wages for the next 6 weeks and have him train with our team for over 4 weeks of preseason. 

Why is it set up like this? 

[FrazT]

Often , if you don't set the game otherwise, the game will put an out of contract player on a week-by-week contract until you actually terminate the contract. You usually also get the option to set for release before the contract expires when you get the news message that his contract is expiring.

[rsihn]

2 hours ago, FrazT said:

Often , if you don't set the game otherwise, the game will put an out of contract player on a week-by-week contract until you actually terminate the contract. You usually also get the option to set for release before the contract expires when you get the news message that his contract is expiring.

Yeah but it removes the option to release the player once he accepts an end of contract offer from another club.  To be fair, the same thing happens with AI controlled clubs who are forced to keep players who have  signed end of contract deals with another club but it seems like such a strange design decision considering that there is no logical reason why the players wouldn't be released by both AI and human controlled clubs as soon as their contract expires.