What's the best option in my case ?

Hi mates,

I have a huge dilemna concerning one of my websites.
This website is penalized by Google, I think penalty is due to netlinking (I work on this) and perhaps also due to the exact match domain name.

Between my competitors, the leader has an exact match domain with the perfect keywords : www.perfectdomainname.com and I have www.perfect-domainname.com but his site is pretty old compared to mine.
For me, Google is possibly punishing me for being too similar with the leader.

I need to act as I have spent a lot of time for one year to get rid of this penalty, without any success.

I am trying to delete the poor quality links and I am also thinking of changing the domain name. I have two options :
- Use another existing EMD I have with different but competitive keywords
This domain name is almost 10 years old and the current one is 4 only.
- Choose a new domain without any competitive keywords and brand it through time, but in this case it will be totally new for Google

What do you guys recommend ? Also, do you think it's a good way to get rid of a potential penalty ?

Thanks in advance.