In a follow up to our previous article, we further questioned League of Legends Team Manager Alan Reid about the upcoming UKLC Relegation Series.
This will be your third time in a UKLC promo/relegation. What do you think will be the difference this time around?
“We have some really strong elements already on this team. It’s making sure they have a team around them to break anyone going against them. In early scrims with our newest iteration, we’ve shown great improvement. This was a team that contented in the UKLC for a while. We feel we have that fire back and we want to push it while we’ve got it. Also we don’t go against Bulldog. At least they can’t knock us out this time.”
Have you been watching the UKEL? Who caught your eye?
“Yes I have. Given that I re-entered League of Legends management by managing Viperio in the UKEL, it holds a special place. It’s been a wacky split and if I’m to be really honest, I never thought Nox would make it into the upper brackets, never alone be against us in the UKLC relegation. With some key changes, they’ve improved heavily.”
“LDN UTD were my 2nd throughout the split. I thought X7 would keep doing well but I noticed after the 2nd week, they weren’t as hot and put LDN UTD as my first option. I trailed both IcyGale and Blank and they both ended up joining LDN UTD. They’re both good players. We’ll see how they stack up against Viperio.”
On reflection, what do you think happened this UKLC this split for Viperio?
“I’m going to be really honest, I take quite a lot of the brunt of the blame. Unfortunately a lot of my time was going up and down from hospital each day as a result of my father getting cancer. It’s a terrible excuse but it’s one that slowly nips at you, you can’t fully commit the time properly needed to manage.”
“As a result, I missed out on a lot of key markers, thought I knew better rather than taking the right advise. It’s not all on me, a lot has to do with the players but as a manager, I dictate the direction and I got it wrong.”
“To answer the question, I believe a lack of synergy and trust is a major problem. I’m here to help the players make this work but the synergy needs to be ignited and we have a plan to sort that out. My idea was to make sure that the players were as good individually. I wanted the players to play more individually but I see now that it’s getting the balance right which is critical. The one year contracts works very well to make sure that we improve the players individually as much as possible, while in the actually league split, improve on the synergy. I got it wrong this time, but this is a hard lesson to have learnt in this manner.”
You can follow Alan Reid on Twitter: @itscoldbolt.
