Given the teams hard run in the Pro League and DreamHack Valencia, making a change like this comes as no real surprise. Afterall the team have been performing below expectations. After only 5 NA play days in the Pro League, the team currently reside at the bottom of the table with only 2 points and a negative 18 round difference. Even if C9 had won their forfeited match against Rogue the team would still inevitably be at the bottom of the table.
DreamHack was also another disappointing performance for the team. They finished 4th place in group D after losing 2 maps to 0 against Chaos and T3H, thus failing to qualify for the playoffs. Based on DH at least Shlongii appears to be playing a fragger role, however, on 9 occasions he was the opening death but only achieving 2 opening kills and overall achieving a negative 21 kill difference. Overall Shlongii has only achieved a 0.71 rating by SiegeGG so far this season. This does not appear to be the same Shlongii that we saw in the Season 7 relegation match against CLG were he was the 2nd highest rated player of the match and the top rated player on Cloud9 (then known as beastcoast) achieving a 1.29 SiegeGG rating. Only time will tell if this change was the right move for C9 and all eyes will be on their next match on Monday 23rd July against Mouseports.