For a team that has won every LCS split since franchising – and multi-million dollar roster investments became the norm rather than the exception – expectations for Team Liquid were at an all time high coming into 2020.

Deciding that veteran jungler Jake “Xmithie” Puchero was on the way out in terms of relevancy, TL chose to replace North America’s smiting king with former Fnatic finalist Mads “Broxah” Brock-Pedersen.

The only issue? Broxah’s visa came late, meaning TL played the first couple of weeks of the split with Shern “Shernfire” Tai in the jungle.

Shernfire played… fine, but TL as a whole underperformed versus Golden Guardians last week. Let’s take a look at that, and the reasoning behind “next game will have Broxah and it’ll all be okay,” and why that line of logic got completely blown out of the water this week by none other than Xmithie’s new team Immortals.

Dropping the occasional game during these rocky initial weeks was to be expected, even for a championship contender like Team Liquid. Whether that came from integrating a new member into the team with Broxah’s eventual appearance, or from Shernfire being unable to fill the gentle giant’s shoes in the meanwhile, Team Liquid’s Spring Split is almost halfway done and they already have a year’s worth of losses.

Addressing the golden elephant in the room

Most of the aforementioned losses were versus other top teams (or those that looked like they could be top on paper), and as such didn’t inspire too much worry. Enter Week 3 Day 2, however, and enter Golden Guardians.

The off-season saw multiple superteams assembled, and GG was not one of them. The most notable pick-up came in the form of Turkish jungler Can “Closer” Çelik, but any high-end hopes were dashed with the introduction of Academy stalwarts Yuri “Keith” Jew and Grayson “Goldenglue” Gilmer. Notorious for their inability to perform up to expectations on the big stage, and with Keith even role swapping mere weeks before the start of the split, GG had underwhelmed both on paper and in performance for the first couple of weeks.

That was until they stopped drafting Keith picks like Tahm Kench and Braum. Putting the career AD carry player on an actual carry support seemed only fitting, and so Keith debuted his Thresh against the best botlane that North America has ever had to offer. Both Yiliang “Doublelift” Peng and Jo “CoreJJ” Yong-in were predicted to establish their dominance over every botlane in the league, but Keith read them like a book. Waiting for Doublelift’s Senna to start the wind up animation of her spells, Keith then threaded a hook and sealed Doublelift’s fate. He then transitioned this lead around the map with a macro understanding that is almost out of place in North America.

Team Liquid are domestic gods but they’re not immortal

Speaking of reads, Broxah got one hell of a welcome to North America this weekend as he made his debut under the TL banner shortly after joining the team. After a disastrous previous week that saw the veteran organization fall to ninth place, insult was only added to injury as Broxah was completely shut out of the Immortals game.

Nickolas “Hakuho” Surgent has often been hailed as the gold standard of top tier domestic North American support talent, and time and time again he has shown up. On a roster as mediocre on paper as IMT however, most people thought that Hakuho would struggle to show up – especially since he is laning without botlane partner of nearly three years Apollo “Apollo” Price. However, Johnny “Altec” Ru has been nothing short of spectacular since making his competitive return, and Hakuho led the veteran marksman to success against Doublelift and CoreJJ even without their often-criticized Senna pick.

Hakuho shut down Broxah’s first attempt at a gank with Xmithie, and poetic justice struck (no offense, I am personally glad that TL had the willingness to change a championship roster in pursuit of international glory, though I love Xmithie) as the former Team Liquid jungler secured first blood on his replacement. From there on out, Xmithie denied the TL jungler any chance of playing the game, putting on a supportive jungler masterclass and making at least the TL fans more than a little wistful.

Do you think Team Liquid will come out on top in Spring Split? No, they've proven they're not capable this season 60%, 31 vote 31 vote 60% 31 vote - 60% of all votes

Yes, they just have to get used to playing with Broxah 40%, 21 vote 21 vote 40% 21 vote - 40% of all votes Total Votes: 52 Voting is closed Poll Options are limited because JavaScript is disabled in your browser.

Team Liquid’s fall is our rise

Perhaps the most concerning thing about these losses is that they came against solidly mediocre teams – teams that we expected, coming into this season, to place no higher than 8th or 9th at best.

Fortunately for Team Liquid, Spring Split largely means nothing in the grand scheme of things. Besides an invite to the Mid-Season Invitational, Spring from now on – if it wasn’t already – will be seen as a testing ground for new rosters before teams make necessary changes in Summer. But it’s unlikely that Team Liquid will be looking to change their roster going into Summer. Not when it did so well up until this point.

Team Liquid could still be the international contenders they hope to be, but as a whole they will have to shore up both their individual and team-based play. If they don’t, then expect Cloud9 or Team SoloMid to rise in their place – and North America’s current dynasty to be legitimately threatened for the first time in over two years. Cloud9 is looking unstoppable right now, but that really could just be because of Team Liquid’s shortcomings. Still, do Cloud9 and TSM have what it takes to compete at Worlds? Do FlyQuest? That’s something I never thought I’d be saying, but with TL in their current state, third seed is wide open, too.

If TL can pull themselves together – and play like a cohesive unit, either integrating the Senna pick better or disregarding it entirely – then on paper they are head and shoulders above every other NA team in terms of raw talent. Right now, however?

There’s legitimate cause for concern.