I'm in League 1 with Redditch now. I use Brob's formation so no idea if that's part of the reason.
Only advice I can give is, backroom advice meetings all the time, get those players who are suggested by the backroom scouted, find a half-decent AM with JPA/JPP at least 10 (which, will give you an accurate report most of the time) and free transfer your way to the top of the table.
You usually have to be extremely quick. July is usually the time to snap up the signings, very little point signing more players by August as they need to be bled into the team. So snap up the best free prospects and starlets ASAP, beat the CPU to the punch basically. Then it's a matter of seeing what happens.
Generally I've noticed this; There are two people who will be the key of any team at those levels. The goalkeeper (ask Alex Ferguson...) you can get away with a **** defence if your keeper is godlike, but you can't get away with a brilliant defence if the keeper's captain pan-hands.
For my Redditch side I've had two keepers, Dean Coleman whos there at the start (perfect for BSN) and then I signed Mirko Ranieri and Italian youth keeper and he's been doing the job since the BSP up until L1 now.
Secondly, you need a goal-machine striker. Anything else is no big deal really. I've had David Williams (BSN), Danny Carlton (BSP) and Aiden O'Brien (L2/L1).
Everyone else is really just gravy. I ran with a RB with only 40CA from the BSN to L2, but really those two positions need to have starlet players. Oh and goalscoring defender helps with how **** corners are in Fm2011, Kallum keane (BSN, 20 goals) and Chris Todd (BSP, 20 goals) plus Luke McCullough all worked for me. Getting a deadball specialist is a bonus too, I had one with 20 freekick taking and he just bangs them in for fun all day long whatever the level of football.