Golden Guardians vs CLG

For our first match of the day, we have a clash between the Golden Guardians and Counter Logic Gaming.

This is an incredibly important fight between two mid-tier teams that are currently tied in the standings with five wins and seven losses. They're looking to make a statement and lock down a playoff spot, and their road towards the top 6 starts here.

The Golden Guardians are still an unknown quantity, but they've displayed a lot of potential and mechanical prowess over the last couple of weeks. They deserve the benefit of the doubt, and even though they don't always play up to their potential (and that might be an understatement), they're improving with each passing week, and have been able to go blow-for-blow with the best teams in the region.

CLG, on the other hand, have decided to swap multiple players out of their starting roster -- Moon instead of Wiggily, and Auto instead of Stixxay. These are all highly questionable changes this late into the split, and their synergy is going to suffer almost by default. They're still in the race for playoffs, and they're up against a team that has been on fire lately (give or take).

They can't afford a loss this time around, and yet they're making these changes basically over night. That's not only ill-advised, but will almost surely end up backfiring.

We're going with the Golden Guardians on this one. They're deceptively strong right now, and Froggen has been on fire lately. He ranks among the best (statistically speaking) mid laners in LCS history, and has been GGS' biggest and most potent catalyst. If they give him priority in the draft (which they should), and allocate some assistance from Contractz and Olleh, they should be more than capable in taking Counter Logic Gaming down.

It won't be clean nor easy, but they should be able to get the win.