It's crunch time as the EU LCS Summer Split Playoffs kick off with Schalke battling against Splyce. Schalke could have earned a bye into the semis after winning their first tiebreaker against G2 but weren't able to do the same against Vitality.

Still, it was a position many didn't expect to find Schalke in after their performances in Spring Split. They had a strong roster on paper but for some reason things didn't click - resulting in them failing to make playoffs.

We caught up with their support Oskar 'Vander' Bogdan to get the low down on how Schalke turned their fortunes around and how the team are feeling ahead before they play in the quarter-finals.

We caught up with Vander ahead of Schalke's EU LCS playoffs quarter-finals bout vs Splyce

Many people couldn't understand why Schalke underperformed so heavily at the start of the season and Vander admitted that the team were just as confused internally: 'There were a lot of expectations on us and we really let people down. We ourselves were wondering what was happening and what was going wrong, so doing well now is a great feeling because we couldn't match up together last Split.'

From eighth in Spring to third in Summer, Schalke have undergone a hige transformation. Vander added that the addition of Maurice 'Amazing' Stuckenschneider in the jungle has been a large boost for the team: 'In Spring, Pride wasn't talking too much which is a big problem as a jungler as you're the person on the team who has the least stuff to focus on in the early game so they need to be able to create plans for the team.

'Now with Amazing we have a lot of communication and support from the jungle. It's not like he's the main shotcaller for the team but he makes good contributions to shotcalling and naturally I now have to shotcall way less than before. For me, I like to create a plan for the team, help them out, call some stuff as well but it's really tough if you have to do that job for two people.'

Vander credited the addition of jungler Amazing as helping solve the team's shotcalling issues

Amazing's veteran experience will be an useful tool for Schalke in the playoffs but Vander explained that the player swap alone wasn't responsible for their change in form: 'I think the big difference for us was the addition of a sports psychologist between Spring and Summer, Fabian Broich is doing great work for us.

'He moved to Berlin just for us and works with the team everyday. You can see that by how confident we are on stage right now, Fabian has played a big part in that.'

You could feel that same confidence when speaking to Vander, this is the first time Schalke as an organisation have ever qualified for the playoffs but that doesn't faze him in the slightest: 'I've played in Playoffs multiple times in my career so it's nothing special to me, it's not that big an achievement. But it's good considering how we struggled in Spring Split.'

He added that he and his bot lane partner Elias 'Upset' Lipp should not be underestimated: 'I think me and Upset have always had really good synergy, we know how each other wants to play. I think during Spring he was a bit nervous in the beginning, he needed to learn and get experience of how things work on stage, now he's been playing great recently.'

Having played with Upset in both Challenger and LCS, the bot lane duo have great syngery

With ADC champions returning to the meta, Upset will be primed to truly show what he can do. However, Vander isn't as excited about the changes: 'I really liked the mage meta with a lot of crazy picks and some bruisers. Now it's switching back to a more boring play-style, you have some kill lanes and combo lanes like Xayah and Rakan but mostly people play picks like Tahm.

'Both sides just scale so there isn't much kill pressure in lane again. AD match-ups are really farm reliant so things get really tricky if your AD has a small item disadvantage. When you play with ADCs, there are windows to roam as a support but they are way smaller than the mage meta because it's so hard to dive a champion like Vlad or Swain 2v1.'