Losing sucks.

In any sport, it’s a symptom of a million and one potential issues. Maybe it just wasn’t a good day. Maybe some bad decisions were made. Maybe you just got outplayed.

CLG got knocked out of the tournament for a variety of reasons. Sure, they didn’t outplay their opponents, but take their performance with a grain of salt. There are a lot of factors at play here, but some of the biggest ones are, for the most part, outside of CLG’s control. With that in mind, take in why you can’t judge CLG’s book by its abysmal cover.

# 1. CLG Have Had Significant Roster And Personnel Issues

This is the most important reason, and it ties into everything else that’ll be talked about later — Finn and Broxah aren’t with the team yet. [Finn will arrive]((https://twitter.com/FinnLoL/status/1351631120031477762?s=20)) in time for the regular season, but [Broxah won’t be here](https://twitter.com/BroxahLoL/status/1349733314089738242?s=20) until February 5th at the earliest. As of now, replacing them are Solo and Griffin (formerly Wiggily), and it would be shortsighted to judge how CLG will play without the full roster.

Not only that, the team has also had to deal with a coronavirus outbreak, per sources such as Travis Gafford and even CLG mid-laner Pobelter during a postgame interview after CLG played 100 Thieves on Saturday.

Embed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muYvRKCkuZw

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One of these is enough to significantly impact a team’s performance; both at the same time are a logistical nightmare.

# 2. This is 100% a Preseason Tournament
Let’s just go ahead and clear the air on this right now - this is not the LCS finals, and CLG (or any other team) is not treating it as such.

The Lock In is meant to provide a competitive environment to players while simultaneously warming them up for the season ahead. This is also when players are going to experiment with new builds and, most importantly, get used to playing with each other. [Just look at Suning’s regular season sweep over TES, after an abysmal showing in the Demacia Cup.](https://stacked.gg/article/the-thre-craziest-upsets-lpl-week-1)

Some teams are competing together for the first time, while others have done so for years. 100 Thieves, for example, are bringing 4/5 players that have all played together (courtesy of Golden Guardians’ 2020 roster), along with teams like Cloud9, who returned three of their five all-star players from last season.

Not only is CLG bringing on three new people, but two of them aren’t here yet. Don’t expect this to be any team’s season-defining performance, especially teams that are playing with substitutes.

# 3. CLG Played all of Their Games Already, the Only Team to do so

This speaks for itself - in both groups, CLG is the only team to have played all four of their tournament games. Most teams have played three, with FlyQuest only playing two.

So, why is this important? Adaptation. 

By drawing the short end of the stick, CLG doesn’t get the chance to spend the week practicing and improving. Catch a cold streak one weekend and it’s over.

Nine other teams have the opportunity to take their learnings and implement them in a competitive environment this weekend. CLG doesn’t get this luxury and will have to wait until the season starts to give it another go.

-

I’m of the belief that the CLG we’ll see on February 5th will be a vastly different beast compared to what we saw last weekend. Galen Holgate, CLG’s head coach, thinks similarly, telling Stacked he was prepared for this outcome.

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“I don’t want to say that going through these incidents or having a full roster will fix everything. I think it’s just important that we continue taking what we can from every game, and when we have our full roster, we’ll just have to continue doing that,” Holgate said.

“These players … have the fundamentals to be a good team, so I take a lot of responsibility on myself … to be able to find an identity that works for everybody, and if we do that we’ll definitely be a strong team.”


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Take a Deep Breath: Why You Shouldn’t Panic About CLG (Yet)

Matt Thibault

@thibaultnottebo

6:39PM on Jan 22, 2021

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