Real Salt Lake notebook: Team completes perfect record in month of May

SANDY — Entering the month of May, there were a lot of questions about Real Salt Lake.

RSL had gone only 1-3-1 up to that point, and while four of RSL's five matches had been on the road, there were a lot of people who wondered whether the club was going to be resigned to having to try to scrape through to the postseason for the third consecutive season.

Flash forward to the end of May, however, and RSL finds itself in a completely difference place — near the top of the Western Conference Standings.

With a 4-1 win over Kansas City on Saturday inside Rio Tinto Stadium, Real finished the month of May with a perfect 5-0 record. Four of those five matches were inside the friendly confines of Rio Tinto, where RSL is now unbeaten in 18 matches, and the club also found a way to break through in its lone away game this month (at Chivas).

"I'm really pleased," RSL coach Jason Kreis said when asked about his team's performance in May. "Obviously pleased — not only with the results — but I think we're playing with a lot of confidence. And even on a night like tonight when the soccer's not great, you still feel like our guys are mature, composed and believe in each other.

"You're thinking all the time, 'The result's gonna come, the result's gonna come, the result's gonna come,' and guess what? It does. It speaks to how much everybody believes in themselves."

Kreis noted that RSL has now played five home games and five away games this season, making it much more fair to judge the club now than it was after the tough opening stages of 2010.

"Now with a balanced schedule," said Kreis, "I think we have a clear indication of where we are and where we should be."

INJURY LIST SWELLING: RSL was already without injured captain Kyle Beckerman when Andy Williams and Chris Wingert hobbled off at halftime Saturday with hamstring injuries.

Neither injury appeared to be too serious, but Kreis said he didn't want to take any chances, what with two more matches coming up this week at D.C. United before a huge home match the following Wednesday against L.A.

"Hopeful that they came off before they got serious. I think that's the initial indication that I got," said Kreis of Williams' and Wingert's injuries.

Kreis was late to Saturday's postgame press conference, but he had the assembled press laughing pretty hard when he eventually made his appearance.