Sorry that I actually had no analysis on your match. I am not good at this.
To play against strong team, I usually use 4-1-4-1 and hard defending. And my wing players are able to move forward to change the formation to 4-5-1v quickly. This is suitable for my players but this may not fit for your team. I always keep patience and maintain defensive mentality even if my team have already lost 1 or even 2 goals. If I still trailed by 1 or 2 goals at about 60 minutes, mentality will be changed to more attacking. To steal such matches, weak teams should try to keep the match low scoring.
As someone (Cat?) said, there are many ways to play this game. For me, I will never try to lose any match, and I will fight for promotion in every season. But you may choose to be more relax and try to win trophies in alternate years. For my experience, teams with 4-5* players is not bad as level 2 team, but this should also comparing with your opponent.
At level 2, you can still have a lot to learn and can experiment different strategy. Usually there is no real competition at this level.