As the week comes to a close the UKLC remains the same as before, with Fnatic Rising at the top of the tower. There were some shocks such as MnM beating both exceL and Diabolus to challenge the academy side. However, the men in orange brought MnM’s dreams crashing down with a convincing victory.
This week firmly puts Fnatic as the team to beat in the competition. However, the organisation’s top laner Shikari believes that there is more to come from his side and himself personally.
He says: “I think we are nowhere near our full potential yet,”
“I have performed extremely poorly so far and I haven’t even come close to the expectations some people have of me and I have of myself. I keep on repeating multiple extremely basic mistakes in our matches that end up hurting the team. Honestly, I’m pretty angry at myself for how I have been playing recently.”
Considering Shikari isn’t playing to the level he is expecting, his side sits first in the leaderboard having claimed a second tower title as of right now. With the team hungry to constantly improve on their previous performances, the goal for Shikari is to not only win the weekly tournaments, but stay on top of the tower until the split ends.
“It feels pretty good (to retain the tower title). I was expecting us to stay on top of the tower and we did,”
“Now that we’re on the top of the tower I want to stay there permanently.” Says the Brit.
One of the major attractions with the UKLC is its unpredictability. Many fans were expecting another exceL UK vs Fnatic Rising match-up, considering they have been the best performing sides so far. Nevertheless, it was MnM who got their shot at the tower champions. This was something that surprised Fnatic’s top laner.
He explains: “I was quite shocked that it was MnM who was challenging us this week. I thought it would be an 80% chance exceL would challenge us or 20% that Diabolus would,”
“I think Excel and Diabolus have the least amount of issues compared to the other six UK teams, so I thought we would end up playing one of those two.”
Possibly one of the hardest topics to discuss is how teams prepare for matches. Many organisations like to keep their secrets to themselves (which is completely understandable). Still, Shikari managed to open up about how the tower champion’s prepare for an opponent they don’t know until minutes before their game.
“This week we just had a warm-up scrim a few hours before our match to test out a few new champions and make sure we were comfortable playing them for a competitive match. Then we were free to relax, get food etc until the finals of the tower, which we all watched together as a team and discussed how we would like to draft against both teams.”
After all is said and done, Fnatic is yet again our tower champions. But, with MnM having another shot at the championship in their rematch. The competition is starting to heat up. Have we found the four playoff sides in Fnatic, exceL, MnM and Diabolus? or will another team shock the system next week?
Don’t forget to tune into the UKLC every Wednesday at 6pm live on Twitch!
By Tom Daniels
Gromp News 
[…] were integral to their success last week, and with Fnatic’s Shikari not performing to his own exceptionally high standards, we could have thunder in the top […]
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