Shanghai Dragons vs Dallas Fuel

For our first of the day we have a pretty interesting matchup between the Dallas Fuel and the Shanghai Dragons. Now this should have by all accounts been an uninteresting, one-sided domination from the former EnVyUs roster, but after four weeks of competition there two teams are occupying the very bottom of the standings. (Shanghai with an abysmal 0-8 record, whereas Dallas has just a single win)

Going into week five, nothing is on the line for either team. They cannot reach the Stage 1 playoffs, they're essentially just waiting for the mid-season signings to come through and to begin preparing for the next stage of competition. But both teams want to end with a win as they need one badly. They need the confidence and morale boost.

The odds are simply said staggering given the context. Now the Fuel has been improving steadily as the weeks went by, but they're still incredibly one-dimensional. While they did try a couple of things out against Philadelphia Fusion, they were consistently getting shut down. Their Doomfist + McCree strat on Eichenwalde fell flat fairly quickly as Taimou was under an insane amount of pressure from the Philadelphia squad. They managed to put up a strong defense but when attacking they were completely out of sync - something that culminated with Chips dying without using his ultimate. Things went a bit better for Dallas on Anubis however, as they had a short renaissance that evoked old EnVyUs vibes with Taimou having an insane performance on Widowmaker, eliminating 15 targets and not dying once. That wasn't enough though in the end as the Fusion persevered under the immense high ground pressure from Taimou. Dallas tried to rebound on Ilios but they fell short on both points - getting up to 99% but then letting Fusion re-take and win the point in one swoop. Essentially they were outplayed, and they didn't have an answer to the Shadowburn + Carpe DPS duo. (even Philadelphia's Neptuno went in on Taimou hunting, killing him multiple times as Mercy)

Dallas simply wasn't good enough in protecting their backline and their supports against the Fusion, as Chipshajen and Harryhook died 14 more times than their Fusion counterparts.

Now the Dragons are far from world beaters as is evident by their winless record so far, but they've shown improvement as well. They were unable to do much last week as they were annihilated in 4-0 fashion by the New York Excelsior and the London Spitfires - quite literally the two best OWL teams at the moment. However just a week prior, they took Dorado off of Seoul Dynasty, and went the full five map distance with Philadelphia Fusion, taking Oasis and Junkertown. They were unable to pull off the upset as they couldn't handle Shadowburn and Carpe's sensational play on Lijiang Tower (as many teams couldn't) but it was arguably the first time that we saw this team be truly competitive.

We're going with the Dragons here, but do have in mind that the outcome of this match is up in the air and could very well go the five map distance. Dallas is favored and with good reason, however on the off-chance that they lose (as they did every single time but once this season) this could be a very big win.