G2 Esports vs Rogue – 2021 LEC Spring Playoffs Betting Preview

G2 Esports enter this bout as heavy favorites, which is not too surprising, considering they historically do well against Rogue, however, if their recent showings are any indication, we might want to be careful not to be too excited about G2 this Saturday.

G2 Esports vs Rogue

Saturday, April 10 at 17:00 CET
LEC Studio, Berlin, Germany (LAN)

G2 Esports Have Leadership Issues

After the departure of Luka “Perkz” Perković from G2 Esports ahead of this season, there were speculations about how G2 will not look the same. And that was not necessarily because they lack individual quality with Martin “Rekkles” Larsson replacing him, but rather because G2 lost their leader and shotcaller.

At first, it seemed like G2 weren’t affected too much by that move, since they had a fairly successful regular season. That said, things started to look much different after their iffy showing against Schalke 04, and 1-3 loss against MAD Lions.

Even G2 jungler Marcin “Jankos” Jankowski has stated on one of his streams that they are struggling because no one on the team wants to take the lead. While he has promised to step up and take over that role, it remains to be seen whether Jankos will be able to implement the needed changes on such short notice.

G2 Are Just Not Playing Well

Outside of their leadership problems, G2 Esports are also not playing as well as many expected them to. Perhaps it’s the meta that doesn’t suit them, maybe they didn’t have enough time to gel together, or perhaps losing Perkz ended up harming this team much more than initially expected.

We don’t even need to go too deep into the numbers to see that all five members of G2 are just not playing at the level you would expect from four-time back-to-back LEC champions. They’re still a very talented team that can improve, but the question is: will they?

Some of G2’s struggles have to do with their subpar individual performances, but then there’s also extremely bad drafting. While I don’t mind seeing some unusual picks, the Karma pick for Rekkles, Trundle jungle, and blinding Sion for the top lane last week wasn’t exactly what you would call good drafts and that’s not even a subjective opinion.

There are arguments to be made G2 had a realistic chance to defeat MAD Lions. G2 should have won game 1, they got hard outdated in game two, and had a solid chance to win game four, but were unable to respond to Ezreal pick with their team composition. In short, G2 lost most of those maps due to draft gaps.

Rogue Are Better Than Last Year

With the signing of Rekkles, G2 field a better team than in 2020, and are arguably stronger, but so are MAD Lions and especially Rogue. It’s very clear that Rogue have improved by a lot and are in some aspects playing the best LoL in the league, but people still seem to refuse to give teams outside of G2 any respect.

Since G2 have been so dominant over the last two years, there is some confirmation bias, which forces people to believe that “G2 always end up winning”. And while that was true for a very long time, it’s hard to make a solid case for G2 (in their current state) over MAD and Rogue outside of that argument.

With the signing of Andrei “Odoamne” Pascu, Rogue have essentially fixed their only weakness from last season, when they were playing with Finn “Finn” Wiestål, who was not at the level of top-tier top laners in the LEC. With this change, Rogue have become a well-rounded team, however, they still have one big weakness.

Rogue historically struggle against G2

Eleven wins and zero losses, that’s the head-to-head record G2 Esports hold against Rogue throughout history. No matter how good Rogue have looked any given season, they never managed to defeat G2 Esports – even during the regular season, when G2 wasn’t performing at their best.

While I don’t like to overreact to best-of-one (Bo1) results and put too much weight on them when it comes to predicting the outcome of a Bo5 clash, it is still important to remember that Rogue have never beaten G2 before. It’s also important to note that G2 have looked progressively worse since the group stage ended, and should have no business winning on Saturday if they don’t improve upon their showing last week.

Betting Tips for G2 Esports vs Rogue

If both teams decide to play to the best of their ability, G2 Esports should be winning with ease, but as we have established, G2 did not look too good last week. While it’s very easy to excuse G2’s losses, there must be a point where you come to terms that a team is just not as good as expected.

As talked about G2’s performances in our MAD Lions vs G2 betting preview: “But after a while, those poor and unconvincing performances become way too normal for me to continue trusting G2 will get better.”

Here, we’re put in a difficult position, as we need to pick between two sides that both have their positives and negatives. On one side, we have G2 who haven’t been playing well this playoffs but are supposedly putting in work to fix their problems, have a much higher ceiling than Rogue, and historically do well in Bo5s.

On the other side we have Rogue, who have been a much more consistent team this season, are arguably underrated by the community and have looked fairly decent so far. However, they’re also a team that historically struggles against G2 and are known for choking in Bo5s.

Both sides lost against MAD Lions, but we know for a fact both can be much better than what they had shown that day. While I’m very tempted to bet against G2, there are way too many question marks above Rogue for me to take them at 2.60. If G2 Jankos proves to be a capable leader and helps G2 wake up for this match, they should win, granted I don’t expect a very one-sided affair.

Prediction: G2 Esports to win – 1.507 Pinnacle

Prediction: Over 4.5 Maps – 2.700 Pinnacle

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