Vincent "Freekje" Vanloo

Vincent has been around the CS:S scene since it began and is a well known and established personality in the BENELUX scene.

Although effectively retired, Vincent utilises a lot of his time fulfilling his role as an admin for CS:S helping to run tournaments for E-sports Heaven and has been integral to the smooth running of all competitions so far.

"Summer time! Not much activity going on this last month, seems we're on a rollercoaster ride again going slowly uphill, preparing for a good peak. There have been a lot of team changes in the last couple of weeks, most notable .PhP joining the Italians for an iseries event. Or just for easier orga/sponsership adventures, who knows?

While we are all waiting for HPE updates, others decided to continue, zblock brought a nice update fixing some new issues and no one less then Ritch booted up a campaign (EVERYTHING WRONG WITH SOURCE, FIX IT ) to get some responses from valve. Surprisingly Valve replied on the questions at hand, beeing it were answers writen by a 12y old with downs syndrome. Let us just hope ESWC starts announcing qualifiers really soon so we can get some more action!"

Richard Lewis

Richard comes from a journalistic background and has covered e-sports in print, on radio and television having worked for such organisations as GotFrag and CGS. He is the current content manager of Cadred where he contributes a weekly e-sports column. He was last year’s captain of Team UK in the ClanBase Nations Cup, although now he retired from playing.

He now concentrates on writing. Over the years he worked for Zboard, xciteuk, Infused and 4kings. These days he chooses to solely focus on his writing within the gaming industry.

"Pick a top 5? Piece of piss. Pick a top ten... What a fucking shambles it becomes and no mistake. Even trying to keep track of who is who and what is what at the moment is like trying to figure out exactly what the writers in Lost were doing. They didn't have a fucking clue and I doubt any of you do either.

It hasn't helped that events have been thin on the ground but online leagues have been plagued by teams simply not being bothered to turn up, or to even try and push through when the roster is looking rocky. What we have outside of a top five is pretty much a melange of mixes who could all beat each other on their day and then fold before they've even had time to do a victory lap of the server.

That's what CS:S has become and it's not just a matter of waiting and seeing if the Summer season will perk it all up or whether this is to become the norm. Good luck voters."

Emmanuel "Wave" Meunier

The latest addition to our news team brings with him an in depth knowledge of CS:S and 1.6, especially in his native France. His work covering French EPS has been integral to the continued development of the site.

He also joked that having a French person on the panel might ensure less arguments about the top ten in future, although somehow we doubt that very much.

"Things have not evolved too much in this quiet month of June. Still no more new news about ESWC qualifiers but the 1.6 ones haven't been announced so there is no reason to be pessimist yet. Many moves have dynamited the Danish scene but they will have time to rebuilt and get prepared as there is nothing big coming shortly. About the top ten we really can't know about the form of everybody. The podium should be composed of the same teams that in May with VeryGames and Virus as tenors, and EPSILON following. For the rest it is hard to determine accurately in this consequent period without competition.

The spotlight will be on the French scene in the beginning of July as the ESWC qualification will kick off with the Masters finals. Marking the end of the LAN season and a national title to determine it will be a quite important event, even trough the suspense will certainly be lacking."

Mike "Rickeh" McGhee

As the new features editor, Mike brings with him an in depth knowledge of the European scene and not just those usual suspects that everyone can claim to know about. Having started plying his trade as a news contributer, he is now part of the management team here at Cadred and contributes regularly with features.

"Well as we make our way past the half way point of the year it seems like almost every team and player in Europe has gone and done it again.. With the Danish scene imploding, the Swedish scene being almost non-existent and the UK scene in as big a mess as ever I actually struggled to come up with ten teams worthy of being considered the best in Europe, as did most voters this month.

There's no telling what will come from what I've dubbed "DenmarkGate" as they have gone from having 4-5 teams in this monthly top10 to having just one. I'm certain all will become clear in the near future, much like with the UK scene which is also caught up in a bit of a stormcloud, with numerous teams rumoured to be considering making roster shake-ups.

At least you can always count on VeryGames being the best and at this moment Virus are still just lagging behind. Below that it's anyone's guess but I have a sneaking suspicion that LDLC will be making a surge for the top come Autumn."

Ben "ben0" Balcombe

The veteran CS:S player joins the panel this month with a view to a long term move.

Having captained the former Zboard line-up Ben is no stranger to punditry having been the creator of Source Junky's UK top ten, including a strange mathematical system that only he knows and now subsequently can't remember due to brain cell loss.

Having been around since 2004 Ben did take a break from the scene but has returned with great interest.

"How am I supposed to keep up with this? It's like the teams have all been infected with the ritch gibbs virus and are therefore incapable of sticking together anymore. Ritchident Evil? No, that's rubbish.

Still, no denying who the big dogs are. French and Finnish dominating the scene, which is so insane it makes my head hurt. What next? A German team that can perform at LAN. Well, no. Let's not go too crazy, I expect mTw will be plummeting in the rankings as they continue to stand by players because of their fanbase rather than their ability.

It's just all a bit chaotic at the moment. So much so I'm just going to have a drink and comeback after the Summer events when things might have settled down."

The Top 10 will continue at the start of June with the next installment.