RSL still has a playoff attitude

Like all the Real Salt Lake fans, Dave Checketts has grown a little restless with his team the past couple of months. Between the 11-game winless streak and the 556-minute scoring drought, the owner of Real Salt Lake was starting to wonder what happened to all that potential.

After all, with big-name MLS talent like Eddie Pope, Jason Kreis, Clint Mathis and Andy Williams, how could a team not succeed?

"I thought our team would be better than it's been," said Checketts following Saturday's 3-0 victory over FC Dallas. "I thought we'd get a road win by now. I thought we'd score more goals. But here we are with a chance to still make the playoffs."

That's really the attitude of the whole team heading into this week's all-star break.

With everything that's gone wrong with RSL this year, which is a lot, the expansion MLS club is still very much in the thick of the playoff chase.

"When we come back, we've got a fresh start," said RSL rookie Kenny Cutler. "From what I understand the second half is like a whole new season. We've got a fresh start. We'll come back knowing we can win games, we can score goals and we can defend."

All three of those things have failed RSL countless times in the past couple of months.

In the first month or so, the team wasn't scoring many goals but still found a way to get results. During the next month and a half, the team appeared to be shooting blindfolded, and set a new record for consecutive minutes without a goal. Quite recently, RSL rediscovered its shooting touch, but almost simultaneously became a horrible defensive team.

Not a single day went by during those stretches that Checketts questioned what the coaching staff and front office were doing — he's realistic. No matter how good things looked on paper, shedding that expansion label takes time, and Checketts is convinced he's got the right man for the job.

"It's no secret, our competitive advantage is John Ellinger," said Checketts. "These guys come here because they want to play for him. You have players telling agents 'I want to go back to MLS, but only if I can play for RSL.' As much as we all want to think it's about this terrific front office and Salt Lake City, it's about John Ellinger."

Checketts reiterated that the Real Salt Lake head coaching job is Ellinger's for as long as he wants it.