Teams always refer to the “extra percentages” they need in order to take the next step, but who is the closest?

“We just need to find the extra percentages.”

It’s a statement that you see a lot in interviews following defeats - especially from MOUZ players - and more often than not, it feels like bullsh-t.

Instead of any actual analysis as to why they lost, the “extra percentages” answer serves as a cop-out. An easy way to say “we didn’t play well enough”, or rather, “we just aren’t good enough”.

But that doesn’t mean there isn’t any validity to the notion of “extra percentages”. Go back to Vitality in the second half of last year, and the percentages missing were clear. The missed smokes in the final in London, the slight dip in individual levels across the board. If neither of those things happen, how many more trophies could they have won?

Oftentimes, those extra percentages will just be found within form. FURIA are a perfect case for that, with their slightly improved form being enough to see them through to the IEM Kraków final, but not really good enough to truly challenge Vitality.

There could also be teams like NIP, or Astralis, who look great but very clearly lack the time playing together to truly be at their peak. Or teams like FUT, or PARIVISION, who are undoubtedly set to become top, top teams, but just simply lack the top-level experience to consistently knock down the biggest foes.

But what about the teams that these things apply to? What about the teams who, try as they might, will never find their extra percentages in time, experience, or a little spike in form? What do they do to squeeze a little more out of the bottle and take the next step?

I’ll give you a hint: in most cases, it involves something big and green. And no, I don’t mean Green Giant sweetcorn.

Isn’t this gun meant to be OP?

Opinions on the AWP seem to be constantly divided. For many, it’s an OP gun with too high of a one-shot capability. For others, it’s severely underpowered in CS2, nerfed by the apparent peeker’s advantage and the general strength of riflers.

But, in KingT’s words, to put the debate to rest:

Now, this general idea of the AWP being bad is something that hasn’t been helped by the introduction of rating 3.0. But KingT is right, AWPing is still good in CS2 - and if you don’t think so, please refer yourself to the likes of ZywOo, molodoy, m0NESY, sh1ro, s1mple, gr1ks, and-

Well, you get the point.

The fact is, there are still dominating AWPers in more games than not. The problem is, there are also a tonne of bad AWPers who are embarrassing themselves in more games than not.

You already know where this is going.

ultimate: your time has come. And to be clear, I mean to get beaten by my hate-hammer (is that a euphemism?) AND your time on this Liquid team.

Of course, ultimate is not the only offender of criminal AWPing. Nor are Liquid the only team that would benefit from a new AWPer, because both FaZe and G2’s are useless, too. Except in the case of FaZe, they’re a fair few extra percentages away from being a good team.

So, yeah, SunPayus - your head is on the chopping block too.

I can’t say this plainly enough: both Liquid and G2 need new AWPers, because both teams are capable of becoming consistent playoff teams. Their performances so far in 2026 are more than enough evidence for this, but also enough to show that they can’t do it while still fielding their whiff-heavy AWPers.

It’s not even like there aren’t any better AWPers out there, either - try has just signed for Passion UA, ffs. But even with the Argentinian once again off the market, there are other options. G2 even has one on their payroll, albeit out on loan at MIBR.

gr1ks, kl1m - even degster, in the context of Liquid - would all be better than the snipers currently wearing these two famous jerseys. None of them have the sheer lack of accuracy of average-game SunPayus, and they’re all also far smarter players than ultimate.

Now, I’m not really advocating for degster - seriously, he’s the most stop-gap fix imaginable - but considering Passion UA (yeah) have just signed try, and Astralis have visibly improved from having phzy on the server, what kind of hubris is it preventing G2 and Liquid from making these guaranteed hit moves?

Especially G2, who - for the sake of emphasis - already has one of the biggest AWPing prodigies out there signed to their organisation.

Sort it out, lads, and I bet the improvement will blow you away. The consistency and firepower are there elsewhere - you just need your molodoy. And he’s more obvious than you seem to think.

Roles are important, actually

The next two teams are a little obvious, unfortunately. However, I’m not going to stop shouting this from the rooftops until it actually happens.

Falcons, my brothers, you’ve just got to accept that this sh-t isn’t working. zonic aside (who, never fear, I will be coming for in the near future), the role balance of this team stinks.

You’ve got kyxsan, an IGL relatively happy to take space and make information-seeking plays. Then you have NiKo, a very versatile player who will always be best served as the tip of the spear. Oh, but you also have TeSeS, another player who is similarly most effective when placed at the head of the attack, albeit in a slightly more supportive role.

It wasn’t incredible, but you made it work. And then you went and added kyousuke, a player who can only be placed in those positions favoured by NiKo and TeSeS, because his zoomer ADHD won’t allow him to do anything else.

Now look, I don’t blame you for signing kyousuke. I’d have done it too. I mean, how could you not? He was the latest Russian prodigy to come through the Spirit wonderkid factory, and given that he was happy to leave so as to not be overshadowed by donk, it’s better you have him than one of your rivals.

The issue with that, though, is that you benched Magisk to sign him. And not the player who would be permanently sent to that little chair in the corner of hotel rooms as a result of the new kid on the block’s arrival.

Okay, maybe Magisk also needed to go, he wasn’t exactly great. And maybe TeSeS deserved a chance to be versatile, but what about TeSeS ever made you think he would be?

For the sake of it, let’s just take a quick look at the numbers. In the first half of 2025, playing in generally favourable positions, TeSeS recorded a perfectly respectable 1.07 rating, with that number increasing to 1.15 on T sides.

However, after kyousuke arrived, that rating fell to 0.95, the lowest on the team. And, in case you were wondering, the T sides became the problem, dropping drastically to 0.93.

Now, if you had just done the correct thing and made a change over the Winter break, we might have already seen you lift a trophy this year. Sure, it would have been BLAST Bounty, but who knows what would have happened in Kraków without your resident bum and a returning kyousuke?

Unloseable rounds aside, it’s this role balance issue that keeps you far away from your closest rivals. If you had a Jimpphat, a b1t, or even a PR, you might look a lot closer to the likes of FURIA or Vitality. And given the fact that you made light work of Vitality with a nobody like NucleonZ in Bounty, that should be pretty f-cking clear by now.

And look, I get it, the dominoes just didn’t fall when you needed to. But you seem to forget that you’re Falcons - you don’t wait for the dominoes to fall, you’re the ones who topple them. And then, just like in all the other games that apparently only exist for the purpose of the Esports World Cup, you become the undying conquerors.

Stop f-cking about.

Please?

Do something. Anything.

You might hate me for saying this, but I need you all to accept something: MOUZ are a bloody good team.

Sure, they might not always be great in the biggest matches, but do remember that those big matches often come against a Vitality team they can only hope to match once in a blue moon.

Despite those struggles, they’ve still gone a full year making it to the playoffs of every event they’ve attended, and more often than not, those runs have been to at least the top four.

No bad team is doing that, even if they’re utterly auraless.

They could be better, though, and I’m the first person to admit that.

That doesn’t mean just replacing apparent wantaway star Jimpphat, either, because while PR would be great - and also very clearly wants that move - that isn’t going to stop their leadership issue.

Now, I like Brollan, but do I think he’s a good IGL? No, I don’t. I think he’s a makeshift IGL made to look good by an incredibly underappreciated coach. And it’s a problem that needs to be addressed.

One solution to that would be to sign JT, although given his recent reinforcements at Passion UA, that feels unlikely. At least for now, anyway. So how about another makeshift IGL?

Seriously, stay with me here.

Do you know what responsibility Brollan doesn’t have on MOUZ? Any guesses? If you said “call CT sides”, then well done, you are correct.

Instead of the Swede, that responsibility falls to xertioN. Similar to NiKo on Falcons, xertioN is just in better positions to call rotations, and given that his 2025 CT side rating stands at 1.09 compared to 1.10 on T side, I’d say it doesn’t affect him too much.

He also seems to be pretty good at it, too, considering MOUZ’ 48.9% T side win rate saw them ninth in 2025, while their 53.9% CT side win rate saw them third.

Of course, this proposed change does mean that Brollan effectively becomes useless to MOUZ, so I’m going to have to ask you to really, really stay with me one more time, because I have the perfect answer:

jL.

No, really.

Think about it: not only is he a better player than Brollan, but he was also the beating heart of a NAVI team that was crowned the team of the year in 2024. A light-hearted figure, he was the player always seen to be hyping up NAVI during their run that year, and that’s something MOUZ sorely lack when the going gets tough on stage.

Of course, firepower might still be an issue compared to the likes of Vitality or Spirit, but maybe the extra percentages for MOUZ can just be found in vibes. Maybe, in jL, they might finally find the cure to their stagefright.

Because that just is the truth of all of this - it’s all a big maybe. There’s nothing saying kl1m or gr1ks would handle the step up to tier one on Liquid or G2, nor is there anything to say that unloseable rounds being lost would cease to happen with better role balance on Falcons, but there is one thing that is certain:

None of these teams will find their extra percentages with their current lineup.