Liquid has announced that it is sending two members – Richard «shox» Papillon and Eric «adreN» Hoag to the reserves at once. This decision was made after the first half of the year went poorly for Liquid as a whole, with its main achievement being a 5-8th place finish at ESL Pro League Season 15. The American team failed to progress further at BLAST Premier Spring Groups, and was eliminated in the group stages at the biggest events of the year, such as IEM Katowice and PGL Major Antwerp.
Shox played for Liquid for six months, but failed to produce strong individual results during that time, remaining with an average rating of 0.94. As for adreN, for him leaving Liquid will mean the end of the second period of cooperation with the team. Last time he worked with her as coach until the end of 2020, but then after a break of a few months he returned in May 2021. However, he failed to bring Liquid to the same level the second time around. Compared to 2019, when the team under his leadership won the Intel Grand Slam, its successes can be called more than modest.
The announcement of the changes in Liquid's lineup came days before the participants of IEM Cologne are expected to announce their final lineups. Thus, the team has to find a fifth player in a very short period of time.