Yes, they are 8th place right now.
But they recently beat IMT, who was considered the top team a couple of weeks ago. They are 3-2 with MikeYeung and Xpecial They have shown improvement starting week 3
Despite the recent loss to TL, they have looked like a playoff team over the past few weeks.
I know a lot of people don't share this opinion but NA is possibly the most competitive region as far as difference in skill between teams on the top and teams on the bottom making NA one of the most interesting regions to watch and follow.
It is not surprising to see a team on the bottom turn their play around and move up the ranks and a team at the top fall apart and move back down. This is likely due to a lack of consistency in their play but it still makes for good competition for playoff spots with teams that are all capable of making finals.
Granted the level of quality in teams in LCK is much better but their top teams are so good they are capable of making the bottom teams look bad in comparison (even though the bottom few teams would likely do well in other regions.)
EU is much better this split then last split though but though but all three EU LPL and LMS have one or two teams that all the other teams just make look like they don't belong.
The thing I'm more considering is can they keep this up. Going to be in some tough games to start the second half of the season. They haven't faced TSM yet in their first half so
TSM (2) DIG in which they have already lost against, same can be said about Cloud 9, FQ, CLG, and Team Liquid. The only team that P1 have beaten before was Echo Fox.
P1 can make the playoffs considering both Echo Fox and Flyquest are in their way and they're not that great so they can potentially beat both of them and get the 6th seed - having to only beat out NV in which if P1 stays as hot as they are now they certainly can.
I don't think P1 are bad either, as you pointed out Xpecail has taken a team and players that were getting beat easily in lane (Ryu/Arrow) and made them dominant again.
People just say P1 is a bad team/8th place team/worst NA team to trash talk EU (at least during rift rivals). For the people who had no faith in P1 being able to win games during rift rivals, I don't know what they're thinking. The old P1 was pretty bad yes, but now that Mike Yeung and Xspecial are on board, they are definitely a top 4-5 team. Had they played with this line-up from the start, they would definitely have been higher in the standings. They will only continue to improve, when they get more used to playing together. Some people just refuse to admit it.
