Golden Guardians has relieved its League of Legends general manager Danan Flander of his duties, the organization announced today.
Flander had served as the GM of Golden Guardians since the 2019 LCS season. During his tenure, he led the team to five LCS playoff appearances. The team’s best season under his direction came in 2020 when Golden Guardians finished just two series away from an appearance at the League World Championship.
“We believe a change at GM was needed to find the success we are looking for next year and beyond,” Golden Guardians said in a statement released earlier today. The organization confirmed that it is beginning the search for a new GM immediately following Flander’s dismissal.
This season, Golden Guardians have posted a record of 13-21 in regular season games across the LCS Spring and Summer Splits. The team qualified for the spring playoffs earlier this year as the sixth seed but were cleanly swept out of the tournament by Cloud9 in the first round. This summer, the team is barely in contention for another playoff berth, largely because the LCS’ summer playoff format is expanded to include the league’s top eight teams instead of only the top six.
Golden Guardians’ roster has been one of the most volatile this summer, with eight different players all starting for the team at some point over the last 15 games. The team made a late-season push at the Summer Split trade deadline to acquire Dignitas jungler River while calling up Academy-level mid laner Lider to start at the LCS level this past week. Despite the flurry of moves, the team has not won a game since July 17. They are in the midst of a six-game losing streak.
Three games remain on the schedule for Golden Guardians during this year’s LCS regular season. They’ll open the LCS’ upcoming “superweek” with matches against top North American teams in Evil Geniuses and Team Liquid before closing out the year with a game against Dignitas, a team that they currently sit one game ahead of in the standings.
