Stat check: Liquid tighten the pursestrings for their fourth rebuild in three years

After Liquid's cadiaN-led superteam failed, they made yet another double swap and landed on Twistzz becoming the in-game leader.

Since 2022, when Liquid began the year with a triple transfer, they have had ten players and three coaches sport their jersey in official matches.

The arrival of Justin "⁠jks⁠" Savage, Roland "⁠ultimate⁠" Tomkowiak, and Torbjørn "⁠mithR⁠" Nyborg brings that total to twelve players and four coaches in just two-and-a-half years. Flux has become the norm, as project after project collapses every six months.

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Liquid bench cadiaN: "Our time together didn't work out as we hoped"

There have been good spells in that timespan. Mareks "⁠YEKINDAR⁠" Gaļinskis's arrival saw Liquid climb to third place in the world and reach two Big Event grand finals at the end of 2022.

But six months later, after a bad Major, that lineup — the organization's last somewhat stable effort — collapsed as two franchise players synonymous with the Liquid brand, Jonathan "⁠EliGE⁠" Jablonowski and Nick "⁠nitr0⁠" Cannella, left the team.

Since then, Liquid have tried multiple routes and have become one of many international sides: Moneyball low-spending on Robert "⁠Patsi⁠" Isyanov and Aleks "⁠Rainwaker⁠" Petrov, a promising rookie in Felipe "⁠skullz⁠" Medeiros, and big name known quantities like Casper "⁠cadiaN⁠" Møller and Russel "⁠Twistzz⁠" Van Dulken.

Only Twistzz's signing, a player who had already succeeded in Liquid before, can be termed a success. One hit, four misses; hardly a record to be proud of.

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YEKINDAR explains why cadiaN's leadership didn't work and addresses form criticism

It makes sense that Liquid have handed full control to Twistzz in their latest rebuild. The Canadian superstar, North America's greatest-ever player for many, will take on in-game leadership as he seeks to wrestle the organization up the standings.

But after expensive misses in the transfer market on cadiaN and skullz, he will have to do so with a roster built with a min-max mindset.

jks, a free agent, has replaced skullz, and ultimate, a Polish 20-year-old who is yet to play a top 30 team in 2024, has come in to be the new sniper.

Role-wise, it's a perfect fit to have jks replace skullz as a passive lurker-anchor.

jks will now share that responsibility of lurking on T and anchoring on CT with Keith "⁠NAF⁠" Markovic, leaving Twistzz, YEKINDAR, and ultimate as the side's early-round playmakers on both sides of the map.

When cadiaN was benched, one option was to sign a new rifling in-game leader , putting NAF into skullz's role as the primary lurker and returning Twistzz to his FaZe roles as the flexible half-lurker on T.

You can see the structure had a player like Rasmus "⁠HooXi⁠" Nielsen arrived, with Twistzz and NAF as the passive duo and YEKINDAR freed to create space on his own terms with HooXi as the sacrificial bomb-site entry.

But the one benefit of the last roster has been the form of Twistzz in his new in-game leader style roaming T side roles: Ones he was always keen to try out.

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Exclusive: Twistzz on joining Liquid, teammates, role he "always wanted" (Part 2)

"When you have an AWPer IGL, it opens up a unique rifler role that usually would be the in-game leader," Twistzz explained in January.

"For me, it's interesting that it's the role that I've always wanted, to be in this true flex position where I can use my actual best qualities, which I feel is being complimentary between sites."

In this role, he has a 1.18 rating on LAN in 2024 (1.09 on T, 1.26 on CT) and has complete freedom — freedom he did not want to give up by changing into a more natural IGL like HooXi.

That left Liquid needing an anchor, which explains why they chose to replace skullz one-for-one, first by chasing Kaike "⁠KSCERATO⁠" Cerato again before opting for jks instead.

jks' 2023 stats maps onto skullz's 2024 remarkably well, with similarly low overall output in terms of kills and damage but excellent survival.

Stats do not always show the nuances of the anchor and support role, and jks' experience will be key as he actively prowls on T side and puts in work in his specialist CT spots like Pit on Inferno or A on Mirage.

But a player as passive as jks means that Liquid will maintain the role composition and aggression balance that caught them off guard so often in the roster under cadiaN.

YEKINDAR remains the only natural aggressive rifler, with three passive riflers in Twistzz, NAF, and jks all preferring to be alive in the late round. ultimate, online and against weaker opposition, was more aggressive than cadiaN, but this will not change anything on T-side executes.

YEKINDAR's form has been under huge scrutiny ever since he first dipped into in-game leadership himself in 2023, going from the eighth-best player of 2021 and 15th in 2022 to a 1.05 LAN rating and 0.93 K/D in 2024.

In 2024 he was too often a bomb-site entry going at a completely different pace to his team. jks' arrival will not change that, either: this is something the team must solve together.

There is also a reason that most teams opt for one aggressive lurker, and one more passive one: David "⁠frozen⁠" Čerňanský and Robin "⁠ropz⁠" Kool, Ludvig "⁠Brollan⁠" Brolin and Jimi "⁠Jimpphat⁠" Salo, Jakob "⁠jabbi⁠" Nygaarda and Alexander "⁠br0⁠" Bro being three examples.

jks and NAF, meanwhile, are almost exact replicas — something that was a problem when they played together in Renegades in 2017 under Aleksandar "⁠kassad⁠" Trifunović.

"After a month and a half [of NAF being on Renegades], jks came to me and told me, 'I feel lost, I don't know what I'm doing on the maps. I want to go home,'" kassad recalled on Hot Take Point Made.

"Liquid getting jks means two things: Either he forgot [about Renegades], or he offered to play more aggressive roles which is [...] not going to be a thing. It's not in jks' game — he's played the same way for 15 years.

"He's crazy passive and you can't have two players like that. The game is more dynamic."

jks and NAF are both good players, reliable anchors who overperform in their positions. But it is not certain they can co-exist without a change to one of their games, six years on from last playing with each other.

The rifling core is full of experience. All four have been Top 20 Players of the Year, but that is no guarantee of success in a new game — one that jks has played just seven times in officials.

We have also barely mentioned the fifth player, a completely unknown quantity in the form of ultimate.

A prodigy who impressed Jarosław "⁠pashaBiceps⁠" Jarząbkowski at PGC when he was just 17, ultimate made a leap in form on CS2, going from a 1.03 rating in CS:GO to a 1.16 in the new game.

"In 2021, during the camp, he was known as a modest, polite, and quiet boy," pashaBiceps commented. "He stood out as a boy with a passion for CS and a clear vision of what he wants to do in life."

While jks is a straight swap for skullz, the same cannot be said for ultimate and cadiaN.

"His greatest strength is getting opening kills in the early stages of the round," his former AGO and Illuminar skipper, Damian "⁠Furlan⁠" Kislowski, told HLTV. "In AGO, he was more withdrawn and afraid to take the initiative. Currently, in CS2, I think he is a more complete player who is not afraid to take the game into his own hands."

He continued, "I would compare his style to ZywOo because he is a person who likes to initiate the round and can win it by himself. He feels equally comfortable with a rifle as with an AWP." High praise, indeed.

The stats back this up, with 0.07 openers per round with sniper rifles and 0.13 overall in 2024. ultimate is far more of a raw fragger (0.75 KPR, 19% multi-kills) than the Dane.

These numbers, of course, came against very weak opposition. ultimate's signing, in that sense, is one that hopes to match Ninjas in Pyjamas' pick of Artem "⁠r1nkle⁠" Moroz, an aggressive tier two sniper with great raw figures.

But not everyone can jump to tier one like r1nkle has. It is far more common for AWPers to shrink, to not go for the picks that worked in tier two, and struggle to match their old output against far more disciplined players.

That risk is always present in Moneyball signings, whatever the role. It was there for Liquid when they signed Rainwaker and had to bench him after just a few months.

"His biggest weakness was probably not communicating in tough situations," Tal "⁠meztal⁠" Hahiashvili told us after praising his former teammate's aggression and versatility on the rifle. "But apparently, there are a lot of tier one players who struggle with that, and their teammates are comming instead of them in those situations."

With limited funds and an absence of other AWPers — alternative players include the likes of Volodymyr "⁠Woro2k⁠" Veletniuk, Iulian "⁠regali⁠" Harjău, Olek "⁠hades⁠" Miskiewicz, and Emil "⁠sL1m3⁠" Stolz —, you can see why Liquid took the gamble.

It's a signing that shows a desire to find an AWPer who is more involved in openers, happier to be part of the trading pack rather than a pure utility man like cadiaN, and at a low cost. Signing Oleksandr "⁠s1mple⁠" Kostyliev was never going to happen.

Liquid's new composition is, therefore, the same as the roster with skullz: Four experienced professionals alongside one rookie who will need to be taken under someone's wing. Data is only one part of the puzzle.

Liquid's new coach, mithR, has the tough brief of guiding Twistzz through a new journey as an in-game leader, helping NAF or jks — or both — develop more aggression, and of molding ultimate into a tier one player.

All in all, it is a tough task for a coach who is well-respected but does not have too many results to boast in stints at North, MOUZ, and Apeks.

Liquid tried the superteam, where the personalities and in-game styles of YEKINDAR, Twistzz, Wilton "⁠zews⁠" Prado, and cadiaN clashed to create a roster that could not even qualify for the Major.

The new roster is not as exciting on paper, but has a trimmed leadership group of Twistzz and YEKINDAR (who were already doing a lot of the strategy according to Duncan "⁠Thorin⁠" Shields) and lower pressure.

Even the most positive fan, though, will have winced slightly upon hearing that Twistzz, still at the peak of his powers, has taken up the captaincy.

The Canadian is the new team's most recognizable face and best player, and now he must also be their leader. It will be his job to deliver feedback well, sacrifice individual hours for team prep, pick up players after losses, take on extra media duty, and perform plenty of other unenviable tasks traditional in-game leaders are used to.

You only need to compare him to Nikola "⁠NiKo⁠" Kovač, who won IEM Dallas as an in-game leader but did not want to become one full-time after HooXi's departure in the understanding that he had more to give.

In some ways, Liquid played this off-season safe with a free jks and a cheap ultimate, but by making Twistzz the team's captain, they are risking more than money; they are risking the form of the one bright spark of the team's 2024 thus far.