Left right out

Probably best to flip your question to 'what should you pay attention to?' I'd say 2 main things, tactics and player quality. You get those right and you'll win everything. Player quality can be done wholly by yourself (without listening to anyone) simply by buying players who are stronger than the last one you had in key attributes. Tactics is about making sure you do about as well as you can with the cattle you have. A good tactic can be the difference between mid-table and promotion so it has the greatest effect of all components of the game. It is also the difference between winning the CL with a $3m wage squad vs $6m wage squad so it will keep you financially afloat in the top leagues. Of lesser concern but still worth your time is finances and contract negotiation of key players at the right time. I have relied wholly on those strategies to take the worst clubs from the depths of conference to be European Champions. All else is just window dressing you can immerse yourself in if you wish to have a deeper game experience.

Coaching my son's U8 team, this behavior seems pretty normal.

To be honest, I'm unconvinced they make any discernable difference anyway, particularly the performance analysts. Also I'd take good scouts over a recruitment analyst any day of the week. Once you can see a player's stats, and have a rough idea of potential, I'm not sure what extra value to game play a recruitment analyst provides. I've never had any problems doing my own analysis and building a good team and ignoring them totally.

Not necessarily the case. Generally success breeds interest in the club and a richer owner may take you over. In terms of manager strategy, I'd probably accept the boards direction (despite your misgivings) but make sure the wage is spent on the right players. That is if your $10k pw striker isn't worth 50k pw find someone who is and offload him.

Hopefully he'll get over the upset in time. Wage demands seem to be a bit seasonal too. I've had players demanding large wages one month and then a month or two later its dropped significantly for no discernable reason, but probably due to some misfiring game engine formula, like not picking up that off-season doesn't mean their form is down or somesuch.

Same problem here. I think the match engine changed with the auto-update to 23.5 so the tactic I had worked unbelievably for 3 seasons and now is misfiring in season 4. Probably you have a choice of rebuild your own tactic or wait for the community to come to grips with 23.5 and works out the best tactics.