Check this out. A quality difference of almost 50. Surprisingly the 2 star team is active but cannot improve his team as he is broke. Players are around 100 million at my level but he doesnt have that. His stadium still has 200 capacity. He attends almost all matches though and beat a few stronger teams enroute to SL QF. I dont get why he plays like that, perhaps to make it more challenging.
You really cant fight it if the game wants you to lose or draw. **** happens, not often though. You can minimise its impact sometimes but there are those that nothing you do matters. In my CL, there are plenty of active teams getting knocked out by teams 20 plus quality weaker.