Analysing my tactics

[Kelron]

This might be a bit of an odd one, but I don't really know a lot about football. I've watched a few matches since getting into Football Manager, but I don't support a team or have much knowledge of real life tactics.

I've started out by copying tactics from here that other people have had success with, which works to an extent, but my problem is making sense of what's happening on the pitch and working out why things go wrong. Some stuff is obvious, e.g. removing the "Hassle Opponents" shout stopped a rash of red cards which had been costing me games, but I don't really know how to pinpoint more subtle problems.

I'm not looking for advice on a specific tactic so much as wanting to know how the experienced players analyse their own tactics. I can see the match analysis tools, but if I don't know what should be happening I can't tell where the problem lies.

Cleon's sticky in this forum is kind of helpful, but still seems to assume a fundamental understanding of the game I don't have yet. Specifically I'd like to be able to tell the difference between individual players under performing vs the team not providing them the support they need, but suggestions for general reading to help me understand football tactics would be helpful.