Golden Guardians vs FlyQuest

For our first match of the day we have a pretty darn exciting clash between two former playoff contenders -- the Golden Guardians and FlyQuest.

Now, by all accounts, this is not a must-watch, let's first get that out of the way. If you skip this game you're bound to be no less entertained than otherwise.

That said, both of these two teams love to skirmish and always bring their A game any time they step foot on the Summoner's Rift. They don't always play at the highest of levels, but at least they try.

They can best be described as two inconsistent, middle of the pack teams that are still struggling to find an identity for themselves. They are by no means bad, but they simply cannot maintain a certain level of play for long enough in order to be taken seriously -- in order to be deemed as bona fide contenders.

Furthermore, they have both attained differing amounts of success over the last couple of months and the Summer Split especially. The Golden Guardians have entered the split swinging and were able to reach the Top 6 fairly quickly. They played out of their minds, quite frankly, and have shown no signs of stopping. They were strong, mechanically sound and synced up any time they stepped foot on stage. They were by no means perfect, but they were much more consistent and prone to making good palys than before, and that was a huge improvement overall. To say the least.

Then they decided to start with their Academy bottom lane last week, and it was a decision that boggled the minds of many. Now, Deftly and Olleh are by no means a powerhouse duo, nor are they hard carrying their team. In fact, they're mostly a detriment, Olleh especially. His positioning is still as bad and questionable as ever, and his ill-advised and badly executed engages also leave a lot to be desired.

They ended the week with an acceptable 1W-1L record but that one decision makes everything going forward uncertain. What will their starting line-up be? It isn't even a matter of "who's better" but rather a matter of cohesion and synergy.

Olleh might not be the sharpest tool in the toolbox but he at least has more synergy with the rest of his team and the same goes for Deftly.

FlyQuest, on the other hand, have started the split off in the worst possible way. Perhaps that's even an understatement. They were a bottom-tier (statistically speaking) team for almost the entire split, and have only recently started racking up wins.

Because of this, predicting the outcome of this clash is downright impossible. FlyQuest have definitely shown less over the last couple of weeks but they've been picking up steam. They've been playing to their strengths and they're back in form as a five-man unit as well. Seeing how their resurgence is still fairly fresh, we simply don't have a big enough sample size in order to fully judge and evaluate their strength.

The Guardians, on the other hand, are as volatile as ever.

In the end, we're going to side with the Golden Guardians, but this is as far from a safe bet as possible. Regardless of the final outcome, expect an absolute barnburner with a ton of sloppy play from both sides. The winner will be decided by the slimmest of margins.