Team Liquid is looking to announce the signing of its new Counter-Strike: Global Offensive player, former SK Gaming rifler Jacob "Pimp" Winneche, according to sources close to the team. Pimp will permanently replace Eric "adreN" Hoag, who was cut from the team last week due to unspecified reasons.
Pimp will join the team immediately, but will not compete with the team at the ECS Season 1 Finals on June 24-26 or the ESL One Cologne major on July 5-10. In his place will be former Team Liquid member, Ukrainian rifler and AWPer Oleksandr "s1mple" Kostyliev. At those events, the lineup for the team will be s1mple, Kenneth "koosta" Suen, Nick "nitr0" Cannella, Jonathan "EliGE" Jablonowski, and Spencer "Hiko" Martin.
The addition of Pimp may not be the only change the Liquid lineup makes. Sources say that koosta is also on the chopping block, with the team currently negotiating with Counter Logic Gaming AWPer Josh "jdm64" Marzano. Jdm64, for his part, has made a name for himself and is currently considered the best AWPer in North America due to solid performances with Counter Logic Gaming over the past few months.
Prior to joining the team, Pimp was a member of SK Gaming and Team Dignitas. Last November, Team Dignitas requested that Pimp step down from its lineup, but he wasn't without a team for long. Only a few weeks after, Pimp was announced to join SK Gaming and has played with the team since.
Now with Liquid, Pimp will look to be the saving grace of a team which has had mediocre results since bringing in koosta in the spring. Following a third/fourth place finish at the MLG Columbus 2016 major, Team Liquid entered an offline slump, taking 13-16th place at DreamHack Malmö, third/fourth at DreamHack Austin, fifth/sixth at ESL Pro League Finals, and most recently, last in its group at ELEAGUE after falling flat to Cloud9 and Renegades.
Team Liquid did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication of this article.