But... I would be lying if I still didn't think he was a downgrade from Derke, at least in the short term.
I really hope he can prove me wrong so I can eat my words but on paper those are my honest thoughts.
I still don't know why Derke was dropped. There's no bad blood between him and the players (at least publicly), and the players/mini have alluded to it being a management decision and not Derke (this could be wrong though). The only plausible explanation is that this was decided long before the end of the season, but even then I don't get why they would make the decision.
I think that they wanted a flexible duelist and I guess fnatic hopes that kaajak can be moulded into one as a rookie. Or they wanted a duelist who plays a different style from derke. Or they could be shifting alfajer back to primary duelist and wanted kaajak as a secondary duelist. There are loads of reasons, I'm just speculating though.
I get they might've wanted a different style, but at that point I'd play around with the roles before doing something as drastic as cutting him. It seemed like alfa was more than willing to play duelist if asked to. Afaik Derke is open to learning new agents, he did it for Yoru and I'd expect him to be able to do it with Neon too.
Honestly the main explanation I can think of is: money. I have no idea what the original source is but I saw in a spreadsheet that FNC was having some severe financial issues, and maybe that meant a pay cut for Derke. If the leak about their financial issues is true, imo this is the most likely explanation.