Sprice does in fact abuse, maybe sometimes not in the literal sense but he does what can easily be called "cheese" (cheese being defined as a strat that unless the enemy is 100% prepared will net a win, but be totally ineffective if the enemy is prepared). This isn't calling him a bad player, rather, just kinda a dick sometimes.
And the USF popcap bug was never fixed because Relic couldn't figure out how to fix it so it essentially just entered the land of "not intended but never going to actually be fixed". Really the biggest effect this has is making Priests very easy to accumulate because you can keep them decrewed until you need a barrage.
This wouldn't be such an issue if Ostheer had reasonable access to all it's tiers, which it currently doesn't.
Got some sources on Relic not being able to fix it?
Its the same thing, no one has ever been able to point to a source of relic saying it is intended.
So both sides claim one or the other.