Mate I have had a look.
It seems that you have a situation that happens quite a bit. You have a team that has come down from a higher Div, he has a 17k Arena, a good line up of US starting talent, understands Game Shape and Enth management and has decided that he wants to promote back up.
This situation has been happening in my Div for some seasons now, unfortunately all you can do is wait for a window of opportunity and go for it. My Div got that window this season when the demoting team left the game, so we only have to compete against the guys in our league for the title. Not good news for the guy who after many seasons of trying to compete for the title unsuccessfully, decided to take the option to tank out to a lower Div to get out of the rut.
My advice would be keep positioning yourself to win your side of the Div, get your GS and Enth as high as you can and throw what you can at him. If he is an experienced manager (which he looks like he is), he has HCA all the way through, he might throw game 2 in the series to get more revenue, so don't CT him in either of the first 2 games, then if there is a game 3 and he does tank game 2, CT him in the 3rd and see what happens.
Not the best news, but I feel your pain, sometimes it feels that you will never get there, but a door will present itself one day, all we can do is position ourselves to be ready to walk through it when it does.