In Response to Astroo's Statement


I’d actually written a pretty non-confrontational statement about the CSGO team being kicked from Diabolus on the 12/10/18. Despite the plethora of issues that have accumulated over the last 6 days. I wanted to break ties without impacting on the roster’s future or reputation.

However seeing Sam ‘Astroo’ Gresham’s twitlonger about his time at Diabolus I obviously need to address the claims and accusations made in his write up.


The property itself was cleaned prior to the last team leaving and the CS team entering as proven by this screenshot of this confirmation by the cleaning company: https://gyazo.com/c9e3423b54d52bde7cc4d545151e6514

Three members of the League team were still in situ at the property for 4 days after this clean took place and admittedly, there were a number of bin bags full of takeaway boxes left out in hallway, kitchen and yard before they left which we were unhappy with. But Nick and I spent the morning discarding of that rubbish and taking the trash to the local tip as well as going over any areas left dirty to rectify that immediately before the players arrived.



In terms of bedsheets and linens. The property had enough in there for 7/8 people for the previous team that lived there so the statement that there were not enough is flat out false. The condition of those sheets have been a point of contention for weeks. Not once have any of them attempted to put them in the washing machine and dryer that are available at the property, if they had such an issue with them. I even came to the house to put on a wash myself as the team seemed to struggle with basic housekeeping skills. The sheets I put in the wash were left in the washing machine for over 8 hours and it wasn’t until around 2am I received a message saying they had finally taken a look at them and still felt they were dirty.

To ease this I personally paid for new linens to be delivered to circumvent the signing off of budget with the board at Diabolus and it taking longer to remedy their concerns. The initial delivery of new linens was missed due to the players not being available to take the order, whether they stayed in bed till 12pm like most days or went out to the shop as I was led to believe I don’t know. I have been at the property today to inspect its condition and found that only one of the packs of new bedding were opened.

Here: https://gyazo.com/1fb651bae7563042845cd13c3db52e7c

I also found the bedding and linen that Nick and I inventoried for the property strewn across the floor which is highly disrespectful to both us and the property owner: https://gyazo.com/ab368f43eeef180015beef005fd96421

Interestingly enough I left that hoover in that room on purpose to see if the guys would put it away. It’s been left there since Monday..




On to meals. The players were given a budget of upto £90+ per week for 3 people who had been living there. Not sure where Sam’s math is going with that one but I digress. The team were also given the ability to order the food themselves online and we would then sign in to the account and pay. Whatever the team ordered is down to them alone. I do not believe that stipulating only 'healthy foods' can be ordered can be construed as a negative, but if people want to eat cheap rubbish then that’s their prerogative. In fact, we had a debate on L1nk wanting to only buy ready meals and we encouraged him to try cooking his own meals and try new stuff.

In terms of the comments about flies and out of date food in the freezer. We have never seen any evidence of this and when we were told this made a food order immediately.

Copies of food orders here: https://gyazo.com/140cc0cfacb25bf63ea0faa39e7f3e18

There is a lot of food left in that house now as I’ve seen today. To imply that you didn't have enough is a complete lie.

PCs - The PC’s we have at the house were used by the previous League time and worked fine for that purpose. As Nick and I are not CSGO hardware experts it was explained to us that the FPS of the units was not good enough. Nick managed to change the settings of the graphics drivers and was pushing out more than 300+ FPS which when we asked were told was more than fine. It wasn't until Hector arrived that we then began getting further complaints about the units. We took Hector’s advice and contacted our supplier to upgrade the systems to what the team requested. The sheer impatience and lack of understanding that the turnaround on getting this done is what has frustrated me the most. Sam eludes that we were sitting on our hands on this but please find below all the correspondence with the supplier to get the units fixed/upgraded for the team.

https://gyazo.com/fc95970f0470b141562babf8e34a8f24

L1nk stream testing from the house: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/318980693?t=03s
https://gyazo.com/c48d772b282941500085f54fbd0af8ab

Ardis and Fleav - Ardis expressed to me that he had a personal situation at home that he needed to return to immediately which we obviously granted and extended every bit of support we could offer. It came out on Wednesday that Fleav had decided to join another team in his native Hungary and would no longer be playing for the team. Later Ardis expressed that he no longer wanted to play as he was distracted by the issues at home. In a position where I have a team that have been invested into by bringing them to a house, paying for flights, gym memberships, practice servers etc.. it was very concerning to hear this. However, we sought to remedy this and listened to the players suggestions on replacements and how best to move forward.


Hectoz - Potentially one of the most virulently poisonous players I have come across. Argumentative, aggressive and generally has been a nuisance since his arrival last Sunday. The way he has spoken to both myself and Nick has been incredibly disrespectful and a conversation was had about this which in itself became very heated and almost came to us telling him to leave. Hector deemed the units unusable before he had even arrived and blamed a succession of performances on the computers. To note, Nick and I have made it abundantly clear to this team that the results were irrelevant this season and the focus was to produce content and build a foundation for our plans next year.

Astro’s rash - Sam showed me an image of a rash he had on his chest and was concerned it was down the cleanliness of the house and/or bed bugs. Nick and I talked and asked the lads to come into a chat and upon seeing further images of the rash insisted that Sam call 111 and seek medical advice. The operators explained to Sam, which was relayed to us, that it was an allergic reaction and not bed bugs or anything of the sort. His post implies we were indifferent about his rash, when in fact, our main concern was his health and well being as with all of our players.

Again, I have been to the property today to inspect the beds and found no traces of bed bugs or any other form of insect in any bed in the property.

Sam’s mattress: https://gyazo.com/8a0c8b6ba90c37fbac75fb3a33f5e5f0

Hector’s mattress: https://gyazo.com/5d738e83167348dbff5984b15dbd9954

L1nk’s mattress: https://gyazo.com/94e9a95e3cfbac8e0a9a21f74819e24a

I’m sure we can all agree they are in acceptable condition.

Players returning home - In my opinion, the team had already decided they wanted to leave despite constantly asking if we could talk about our decision on that yesterday. I explained multiple times that Nick and I were unavailable to do so due to pre-arranged meetings and dealing with our kids in the evening. It came to a head when a message came through to us stating that Astro and L1nk were just going to leave for home.

This was the end of the road for me. See this from a business perspective. I have 2 players out of 5 that have decided to leave the roster. I have 1 player who is totally against every principle that Diabolus expects and 2 that want to return home because they are homesick. This was not going to work in any way shape or form and the decision was made there and then to cut ties with this roster.

As far as Hector is concerned. As I stated to the team, the organisation has put out a substantial amount of money to make this work for them. Gym memberships, food, and planned team bonding sessions (yes, paid for). Why should we as an organisation, after giving them the platform and tools (and improving upon those tools), offer anything further when they decide to pack up and go home and disrespect the staff and organisation. In what other job in the world do you get sacked and your ex-employer is considered liable for your travel home wherever that may be? Sorry, the mentality of players needs to change.




Just to tie off a little bit and show the hypocrisy of this entire sad situation. Here are some photographs of the property from today.

Kitchen trash can: https://gyazo.com/ecf69d48bbcf0543a62d9843ad335676 and there is an empty wheelie bin outside too.

Shit splattered toilets: https://gyazo.com/f5e1b4ba04b8b01810e49b50a262f3c6
https://gyazo.com/9b525a0af757fae7f0a0d87672b3725d

Rubbish bags left out in the rain: https://gyazo.com/f6a3abe04de0ae2e26f8330d0ea994eb

Every single light in the property was also left on which I feel was purposefully done.



My thoughts. I am really disappointed that the team, especially Sam who went to the lengths to write the twitlonger to fundamentally try and destroy and embarrass Diabolus. We have worked tirelessly for you all to give you a platform to play and grow both as players and as a personality. Keeping you updated on business growth that could have benefited you if this trial went well. We time and time again said you were the perfect player for us as you were humble, worked hard and addressed your concerns professionally and courteously. Sadly, I now have the opposite opinion of you.

As far as the comments go I genuinely don’t care what side you want to back on this. We have shown our evidence on the matter and will make no further comment as a line gets drawn under this publicly now. From a business and legal standpoint, I will be taking advice on how to best proceed as this defamatory write up has probably caused harm to the organisation which is completely unwarranted.

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