Liquid announced that it is sending two participants to the reserve at once – Richard "shox" Papillon and Eric "adreN" Hoag. This decision was made after Liquid had a generally poor first half of the year, with its main achievement being a 5th-8th place finish at ESL Pro League Season 15. The American team failed to advance further at the BLAST Premier Spring Groups, and was eliminated in the group stages at the biggest competitions of the year, such as IEM Katowice and PGL Major Antwerp.
Shox played for Liquid for six months, but during this time he was unable to demonstrate high individual results, remaining with an average rating of 0.94. As for adreN, for him leaving Liquid will mean the end of his second period of cooperation with the team. The last time he collaborated with her as a coach until the end of 2020, but then after a break of several months he returned in May 2021. However, the second time he failed to bring Liquid to the same level. Compared to 2019, when the team under his leadership won the Intel Grand Slam, its success can be called more than modest.
The announcement of Liquid's line-up changes comes just days before IEM Cologne participants are expected to announce their final lineups. Thus, the team will have to find a fifth player in a very short period of time.
