Real Salt Lake: Slow starts are becoming the norm

For a team with an abundance of optimism heading into the 2009 season, Real Salt Lake's rugged start is quite distressing. After all, things were supposed to be different this year. Following a season in which it sneaked into the playoffs and then advanced to the Western Conference finals, there was talk of bigger and better things heading into a full season at Rio Tinto Stadium.

It just goes to show that the more things have seemingly changed for the better for RSL, the more they've stayed the same.

Major League Soccer is a results-driven league; there are no points for style. And while sure, the overall quality of play has improved in RSL's five-year history, the results haven't.

Following last weekend's 2-1 loss at San Jose, the team's record now stands at 3-6-2. Those three numbers represent more than just a formation Steve Sampson toyed around with as the U.S. National Team coach during the 1998 World Cup; they represent a bad historical track record.

Real Salt Lake's 3-6-2 record 11 games into the 2009 season is identical to its mark at this point in both its 2005 expansion season and in 2006. Neither of those teams made the playoffs.

Hope is by no means lost. It was below .500 last year at this point with a 3-5-3 record, yet still made the playoffs.

Nonetheless, five straight years of sub-standard results in roughly the first third of the season is becoming a disturbing trend for Real Salt Lake.

"It's somewhere you don't want to be. It puts more pressure on you than should be, and you're always trying to get out of a hole," said RSL keeper Nick Rimando, who's been with the team for three of the past five years. "We keep on saying there's more games, it's a long season, but those points are creeping up on us, those games are creeping up on us. Right now, we really have to put our money where our mouth is and get some points, because the season isn't getting any longer and we need to start getting points."

The problem with consistently poor starts is that battling back in the parity-driven MLS becomes so mentally taxing. Real Salt Lake has played 135 games in franchise history, and it's been above .500 only three times — losing the next game on all three occasions. Two of those occurrences were this year when RSL's record stood at 2-1-0 and then 3-2-0.

The only other week it featured a winning record was July 28 of last year, when a 2-1 victory over Toronto boosted the club's mark to 7-6-6. RSL lost its next two games and finished the season 10-10-10.