Three days ago, GenG announced the departure of most players from the 2019th roster, extending contracts only with the bot lane players, Park ‘Ruler’ Jay-Hyuk and Kim ‘Life’ Jeong-min.
After their decision to not renew contracts with most of the roster, the community expected to see new rookies in the GenG squad, but to their surprise, GenG decided to invest more for the upcoming season and acquired the hottest free agent jungler from SK Telekom T1, Clid!
Gen.G achieved a sixth-place finish in the 2019 LCK Summer Split, failing to qualify for Worlds despite the organization’s track record. The bot-centric roster had gaping holes of inconsistency, barely breaking even in the standings. They had a slow start to the season before improving steadily throughout the summer. In spite of their best efforts, though, they narrowly missed the required circuit points to advance to the playoffs.
The redeeming factors of the previous squad were top laner CuVee and bot lane duo of Ruler and Life. CuVee has been with the team through multiple iterations since 2014; he has been with the team as Samsung Galaxy, KSV, current GenG. He managed to win the World Championship in 2017 with the previous iteration of the roster against SK Telekom T1.
The decision not to renew with him was a surprise, considering he has been the pivotal factor in the top side of the map, securing early advantage and allowing other lanes to exert more pressure due to the enemy pressure on CuVee.
With the recent departure of crucial SK Telekom T1 players ( read more here ) no one expected Clid to land on another LCK roster. Everyone expected Clid to fall on a dominant LPL team such as Royal Never Give Up or Invictus Gaming, but to their surprise, Clid remained in LCK.
The GenG acquisition of him came out of nowhere, but considering that they were paying most money out of the league to the jungler Peanut, perhaps they decided to reinvest the money into a better jungler for more success.
The additions of ‘Bdd’ and ‘Rascal’ to the roster creates a very balanced line-up with carrying potential in every lane. The team becomes a great contender for the LCK championship for a start; if they show up, they could become a contender for the World Championship as well and try to fight for a 2nd championship title for the team.
Stay tuned for more roster changes as teams finalize the deals with the free agents.
