Liquid fall to Betclic in Stake Pulse Beat I final

The reports of Liquid's revival have been greatly exaggerated.

We know, we know, it's one game in a tier three tournament, but a team of the perceived quality of Team Liquid shouldn't really be dropping a map at an event like this. We're a little sick of ragging on them but... come on, dude. Do SOMETHING to make us believe!

This defeat - 2-1 to Betclic at Stake Pulse Beat I - comes off the back of a promising start to life with their new roster at BLAST Bounty, albeit in an online setting, but on LAN this team has so far yet to prove anything, really.

This isn't to take much away from Betclic, who thoroughly deserved their win and had Liquid on toast on the CT side of Nuke, seemingly knowing what Liquid were doing before they did, and we want to congratulate them. They eviscerated Johnny Speeds in the semi-finals, and Liquid to their credit dispatched fnatic in clinical fashion too, but in the big game Liquid wilted.

A nine-round first half on Cache was just about converted by Liquid, largely thanks to EliGE who seemed to be the only one able to turn a round on the T side. Liquid only needed four, and they got their fourth in the final round of regulation. He was also absurd in the first half, and quite clearly looked about two levels above this event at that point, as he should.

But then on Anubis, he was nowhere to be found.

Jorko stood up to be counted on Anubis when his team failed him, not least on the defence where he was fighting fires as quickly as they popped up, but not quickly enough, it seemed. The poor guy was doing everything he could to get his new teammates into the half, but his rifle core let him down.

Much noise has been made around the arrival of JT to Liquid and how he's going to revolutionise their T sides, but their Nuke T side looked stodgy, outdated and predictable. If we had a penny for every time we saw a Liquid player die getting into the vents we'd have... multiple pennies. We weren't counting. It did feel like a lot, though.

Not only that, he was pretty terrible individually as Prism stole the show with some eyecatching holds. When NAF died to a jumping onetap on the pistol round in a 1v2, it just felt like it wasn't going to be Liquid's day - and so it proved.

A win here at Stake Pulse Beat I wouldn't have moved the needle for us on Liquid, but a loss... we have concerns. Deep, deep concerns. There is no reason these players should be anything less than a world class team.