Experative: "We are exploring some replacements right now"

Dust2.us' own Jeffrey "Mnmzzz" Moore caught up with Deniz "Experative" Mutlum following his match against Limitless that eliminated LAG from contention at Fragicago 2024. The two spoke about the match, LAG's recent changes, possible future changes, and the European playstyle as it relates to NA, among other topics.

Please note that the full interview can be found below on YouTube, while the transcript has some key snippets from their conversation.

To start we have to talk about that match. LAG started the series on fire winning the first map 13-3, but after that they slowly faded away with that double overtime loss in the second map and a close loss in the third map. What do you think went wrong to let the series slip away from you guys?

I think overall we had lots of shaky rounds, not only this best of three, also other games. I think it's because of a lack of practice recently and we are playing with a stand in right now. Obviously we're playing with spud instead of rayxts. He has been insane as a sub I have to say, he's playing really good. He has really good game sense.

He did like lots of extras but obviously he doesn't have some utilities or some tactics that we call, etc. It was a little bit of a puggy play style from us in this tournament. Obviously I think we had a lots of individual bad decision making or we didn't get trades and we choked, five to seven rounds I would say, in crucial moments especially on Ancient.

Overall how do you feel about the team's result? Is top four sufficient or were you or were you aiming to go further?

I think we are going to have potentially some changes in the team. We are exploring some replacements right now. I don't want to say [more] right now but I think we are still in good shape. I strongly believe that we are going to be in the ECL playoffs. We have a really good shot right now and I'm still happy and I think we're going to do really well. We have a really good environment, a really good mentality with my teammates and I believe we're going to pull [through]. We're going on to become stronger.

I would say with those changes, we've seen LAG have struggled since adding those two new pieces of the squad, maybe not necessarily performing the level that we've expected. Do you feel the team has taken a step back with these additions and do you feel like you have to do some work to get back to that level?

Yeah I think we kind of rushed some situations especially when we hit like based and Nyyx we had a really good system. I wanted to implement the same system we had with them but with Weeza and rayxts are completely different players.

They are very aggressive, they're calling way more, they are doing more plays so the system we had doesn't work and we had to understand it. The tough games after some tough losses we figured out the system we had was clearly not working out with rayxts and Weeza so we have been changing some playstyles, some calling, then I'm doing less micro right now. I would say and also even position wise we are changing lots of positions right now especially on the CT-side.

We also saw ioRascal retire recently with the team ultimately going for ElPrincipe, the Turkish former coach of Eternal Fire Academy [as a replacement]. What influenced that decision to go with a Turkish coach?

We have been looking for another coach actually. We tried lots of coaches recently. They just joined our practices, offlines, then even other stuff and we decided to go with ElPrincipe because he has a really good experience he could show us.

He added some really cool stuff in some scrims against top teams in NA. We were struggling some rounds and he could give really good solutions and he has been adding some good set strats I would say. In the past he had a lot of good experiences and we strongly believe that he should be able to give that experience to our team.