I agree with most of your ideas. I really hate moments in a game that is only there to make you log in once in a while. The bidding game for staff members fills no function in my opinion. In previous system you bought a staff member for a fixed price and I definitely want that back. Sure, BB will have to adjust the price regularly but that does not need to be manually done.
My suggestion is:
1) Offer staff at a fixed price for a fixed salary.
2) Increase salary like it is done right now. This means that you will sooner or later have to renew staff member.
3) Once a day or once a week, adjust prices so that they are increased if demand is too high for staff at a specific salary and level. In this way BB can keep a balance between how many users that have a staff member at different salary levels. Each user could look at prices once a day or once a week and decide if price is good.
It really is utterly boring to search for new staff members considering how strange the current system is.
I very much would like to have a simplified version of the player transfer market as well to reduce the time it takes to keep looking for a player for a good price. I do not have a better solution than the current one though.