Exeter boss Rob Baxter says players have not lowered their wage expectations in line with the Premiership's lower salary cap.

"The majority of them still coming in are still salaries that you would expect to be paying if it was a £6.4m market," Baxter said.

"There doesn't really seem to be, at this stage, that kind of realisation that it's a big drop-off."

Under the rules clubs have a cap of £5m, plus £600,000-worth of academy credits, and two players whose salaries sit outside the cap.

From next season clubs will only be able to have one player whose wages do not count towards the cap, meaning extra costs they will have to account for.

"It's probably a bit more than a 25% drop off when you start talking about second marquee players disappearing next season if they're not under contract, it's markedly down more than a 25% reduction in the salary cap.

"At the moment that does make the Premiership way less competitive when it comes to southern hemisphere signings, as an example.

"Some of the base salary levels in New Zealand and Australia now are actually comparable to what we could probably offer, whereas before in the £6.4m cap you could be very competitive on base level contracts."

Despite the troubles trying to get players to agree to lower salaries than they might wish for, Baxter says he still expects to have a strong side both domestically and in Europe in the coming years, despite the cap not being due to increase again until the summer of 2024.

"We should still expect to do everything we can to be competitive, we're certainly not thinking of throwing in the towel in Europe over the next two seasons.

"It may well be something that makes us stronger in two years' time," he added.

"The reality is if all the clubs in England spend a couple of years focused largely on development and getting experience into a different group of players, if we move to a £6.4m cap and two marquee players and all the bits and pieces we had before, then all of a sudden we could potentially be in the market to bring in a level of player on top of those newly developed players and it could be a very bright period for English clubs in Europe."