is this a cheat or just using the rules to my advantage?

i have started a game with roma and inter just had the cheek to make an offer for my star midfielder de rossi. to make things worse it was a co-ownership offer and i hate these deals more than anything else in the game. so what i did was say the can give me 7.5m for 50% if he stays with me and i can buy him back for 500k (which i did as soon as the deal went through) enabling me to afford pazzini. is this cheating or just good business sense?

i have started a game with roma and inter just had the cheek to make an offer for my star midfielder de rossi. to make things worse it was a co-ownership offer and i hate these deals more than anything else in the game. so what i did was say the can give me 7.5m for 50% if he stays with me and i can buy him back for 500k (which i did as soon as the deal went through) enabling me to afford pazzini. is this cheating or just good business sense?

Its good business, but in reality, this would never happen. The AI should be wise to buy back fee's really.

usually i just reject because i hate this system but i was so insulted with the offer and i thought de rossi would never accept an offer to sign for one of our rivals when he loves us so much that i just did it any way.

I'd say it's exploiting a gap in the programming. It's not out and out cheating the same way the corner bug isn't, but it's unrealistic in the bigger scheme of things.

Utilisers of the corner bug argue that the 4-2-4 AI supertactic is unrealistic, so extra goals at corners just even things out, so I guess you could argue that something like a cheap buy-back clause evens out an unrealistic transfer market.

When asking about cheating, the thing to ask youself if this: "does doing this hinder my enjoyment of the game?"

I once got so frustrated about not being able to flog my dead wood players that I signed on as another club and bought them all for half price - half price because I thought that was realistic given I was trying to get rid of them. I was Newcastle and wanted rid of Geremi, Smith, Duff, Butt, and a couple of others. Around November time I still felt dirty and started the game again from scratch, and never did it again.

Similarly, I used the corner bug for half a season to keep a team in the prem and didn't feel any sense of accomplishment at the end of the season, so I quit the club (not the game) and was unemployed to 2 years.

It's up to you, mate. It's your game.