Playing CS:GO with friends

my friends and I have decided to play CS:GO together (about ten people in total). We tried to play through connecting to single lobby in CS:GO menu, but several problems had occured with this way.

1. What does counter x/5 in lobby mean? Even though we were here in more then five people, we could still play a game together.
2. When someone was accidentaly disconnected from server, he had struggles with reconnecting to our game. We all had to restart entire game. In case we only left the lobby to start a new one, I could add only few people from my friend list.

Can I please ask you for a advice how to play with more then 5 people comfortably? If we can play without strangers it would be better for us.

I have already tried a method described on this link, however, it did not work well for us (or I did something wrong).
https://www.reddit.com/r/counterstrike/comments/6v8yc3/go_how_to_play_with_more_than_just_5_friends/