Fnatic picked up a hard-fought win against SK Gaming today in a 36-minute brawl, improving to 4-4 in the 2020 LEC Summer Split.
Legendary ADC Rekkles carried Fnatic with his pocket pick, Syndra. He dominated Crownshot’s Ezreal during the laning phase and was the carry his team needed in the mid to late game.
The game was far from clean, however. SK secured early leads and dragons due to their map pressure. SK’s dragon count forced Fnatic to be proactive on the map and led to them making some mistakes. Fnatic secured two Barons, but SK put all of their eggs in the Dragon Soul basket.
Even though SK picked up the Mountain Dragon Soul, it wasn’t enough to stop Fnatic from ending their losing streak.
SK seemed to be in control early on, but a bad move by Ezreal to walk too close to Twisted Fate and Syndra cost them that chance and turned the game in Fnatic’s favor.
While Crownshot has carried SK in the team’s previous games this split, he was a liability today and looked off. He’ll have to try to rebound for tomorrow’s game since SK will need him to take down Rogue.
Fnatic haven’t looked as strong early in this split, lacking decisive teamfight calls and objective control. While the road to their previous winning ways could be long, Fnatic are a team that can make it back.
The road to playoffs hasn’t exactly been smooth sailing for Fnatic this Summer Split. The League of Legends team is currently tied in the regular season standings for fifth place, and they even have the most deaths of any team in the LEC to boot.
As of week four, Fnatic have 121 collective deaths as a roster, three more than FC Schalke 04, who sit in last place with an abysmal 1-8 record. This should be pretty alarming for LEC fans, who considered the perennial European champions a contender for the crown this season.
More than half of those deaths belong to top laner Gabriël “Bwipo” Rau and support Zdravets “Hylissang” Galabov, who are the LEC death leaders this season with 35 and 40 deaths, respectively.
Both players haven’t performed up to par these past few weeks, but the roster as a unit hasn’t played well together. From untimely mistakes to unforced errors, Fnatic haven’t stayed consistent enough to garner any faith from their fanbase just yet. It’s going to be interesting to see if the boys in orange can comeback to their previous form.
