They had better players this year, but I think their team management staff is not professional at all. Their seasoned players (Fakhar, Hafeez, Dunk), did not look like they wanted to win for their franchise by repeating same mistakes and doing blind slogging again and again.
I think there is some background issue of players and franchise which we don't know and players cannot go public about that. I heard that they take some cut from the match fees of players who go on to play international cricket from their development program. Fakhar also wanted to leave this franchise last year but he changed his decision. That could be because of some hidden clause in contract. I can't remember any local player who have left this franchise (like Hasan Ali left PZ last year).
The biggest issue is the support staff for players. When we look at other teams, they have Andy Flower, Mushtaq Ahmed, Sammy, Amla, Inzamam, Botha, Ajmal, Gibbs, Wasim Akram. The only two franchises, which have very unprofessional support staffs are LQ (Aqib Javed) and QG (Moin Khan). The owners of these franchises have blind trust on this support staff and the results are in front of every one.
LQ need to remove Aqib Javed form any role and bring in a professional support staff, but the issue is that the franchise owners themselves are not professional, so they are happy with Aqib. They are trying to run their own cricketing system parallel to the PCB and they will prioritize the players from their player development program. Aqib and Sohail help them in their so called PDP and they are coach and captain respectively. LQ needs and deserves better franchise owners as it's a big franchise with a lot of potential followers, but unfortunately, people are not going to follow them if they keep playing the players from their so called PDP.
. LoL
And then flown back straight after the match. 
