Rogue vs FC Schalke 04

Next up, we have Rogue and Schalke 04. Out all five matches today, this one is arguably the easiest to predict, although it's important to highlight that Schalke 04 looked rather menacing in their dominant win over Fnatic two weeks ago. This is by no means a fight between the second best and worst team in the League as they're not separated by that big of a skill gap, regardless of where they're located in the standings.

Rogue is, obviously, better in almost every regard, but lane-for-lane Schalke definitely has the tools to compete and stay relevant, at least in the early and mid stages of the game.

Rogue has quickly solidified their spot as one of the best teams the LEC has to offer and have been surprisingly dominant, clean, and commanding in most of their games. It is as if the Rogue everyone was expecting for so long finally came online. There is, however, a small caveat: no one's quite sure whether Rogue are so highly ranked right now because most other perennial LEC titans are underperforming, or because they're actually good at this point in time. That's quite an important question, but fortunately we won't have answer it today as they're up against a team many consider the absolute worst in the region. It's not that the Schalke 04 bunch lacks mechanical skill or that they're not good on an individual level but rather that they're often scattered across the map, without any game plan or strategy in sight. They also make huge egregious mistakes almost by default at the most random of times which allows their opponents to capitalize and get the win. Schalke cannot set things up in advance, nor are they clean in execution, regardless if they're ahead or behind in gold. They're just not a particularly good team overall, and even though they have moments of brilliance here and there, they're too few and far between to actually warrant a spot higher up the standings.

Rogue, on the other hand, are confident, aggressive, and are finally doubling down on their biggest strengths. They're playing their own game and are finding a metric ton of success in the process. Again, they're far from perfect but a team like Schalke simply shouldn't be able to capitalize on their mistakes and inherent flaws. They're weaker in every way, shape, and form, but that doesn't mean they won't be able to make this game at least somewhat competitive. There's a fair bit of experience within the Schalke line-up and they could, at best, trade heavy blows before ultimately succumbing.

Either way, it should be an interesting, if somewhat one-sided scrap.