we were promoted trough playoffs with very poor QPR(med. pred. 13) with only few loans(not for first 11, just backups) and one free transfer of Darren Fletcher only because he play ManUtd before).
after quite poor start and very leaky defence i realized that away tactic is not for Us, BPD not gonna work in QPR, so as You can see on SS we have used two tactics for Home and Away, both tweaks of home tactic, changes: for home we only change CF to Poacher, and for away CF to poacher and drag down DLP and set him to Support, no Pi's changed.
I always encourage people to do small tweaks if needed ,pure plug and play is not working for every team.
Off course it is not easy to have good central defenders in low divisions.
my advice to all when picking team is to found club with one good striker,one good mezzala,one good wingback and one good central defender.
If you have team with this 4 players then everything else is no problem.