Blacklist International's coaching staff led by head coach Kristoffer “Bon Chan” Ricaplaza remained unfazed despite the team’s early struggles that saw them drop their first two games – the last one a 2-0 drubbing at the hands of TNC Pro Team ML.

In the post-game presser, Bon Chan bared that he expected such birth pains at least for the first two weeks as the team learns to play without the iconic duo of Jonmar “OhmyV33nus” Villaluna and Danerie “Wise” Del Rosario

“Makakaranas at makakaranas tayo ng pagkatalo which is nasabi ko na dati sa isa sa mga vlog ni Boss Tryke. Sinabi ko dun na kapag nagstart ang MPL, asahan nila na first two weeks mag struggle talaga,” said Bon Chan

“Ito na nga nangyayari na nga, worst ang two weeks pero sana wag na umabot ng two weeks pero yun nga yung expected ko, kasi nasa period pa kami ng adjustment pati ako,” he added.

Despite the early losses, Bon Chan insisted that it’s not yet the time to hit the panic button as they’ve been through this kind of struggles every time they make changes to the team’s lineup.

He also pointed out that the new-look Blacklist team didn’t have the luxury of pre-season tournaments to develop the cohesion and fine-tune their strategies – something that the previous versions of the team had the chance to do when V33Wise was first added to the squad in Season 7 and when Salic “Hadji” Imam joined the crew in Season 8.

“Bigyan niyo pa kami ng one more week, worse na siguro yun, worse na siguro yung two weeks para mag struggle kami pinakamahaba na siguro yung two weeks,” he told the fans.

Meanwhile, Aniel “Master the Basics” Jiandani also stressed the importance of focusing on the team’s improvement rather than the end results at this point.

“Instead na mag focus kami sa pagkapanalo mas maganda na mag focus muna kami sa pag improve muna ng buong team,” said MTB.

“Mas nagfofocus kami ngayon more on the improvements talaga. So pagdumating tayo sa time na okay na lahat, malinis na lahat, tsaka sila makakaexpect ng panalo,” he added.