This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Real Salt Lake isn't where it wants to be, nor needs to be at the moment.

Frankly, the club sits in troubling and unfamiliar territory this deep into a season, in ninth place in the crowded Western Conference at 4-5-6 and 18 points, four ahead of last-place Colorado and eight points behind the Seattle Sounders and Vancouver Whitecaps.

RSL has the worst goal differential in the Western Conference at the moment at minus-5 and have scored just 13 goals through its first 15 matches. Its back line, unstable the last month, has conceded five penalty kicks in the last seven games.

And other teams — at the moment — have time to stack up points this weekend as RSL has a unique mid-June break before it hosts Seattle Sounders 2 in the fourth round of the U.S. Open Cup Tuesday at Rio Tinto Stadium. RSL coach Jeff Cassar gave his players four days off this week before training resumes Friday in Sandy.

"It's a good time to rest when you're not winning," RSL technical director Craig Waibel told the Tribune this week.

Waibel said he saw bright spots in RSL's 0-0 home draw with rival Colorado last Sunday, adding the first 35 minutes of the match were positive and deserved a goal. But it never came. In fact, RSL dodged what would have been a massive loss to the Rapids when Dillon Powers put his 88th-minute penalty kick attempt wide.

Waibel said outside of the 4-0 loss at New England on April 25 and the 4-1 loss at Montreal on May 16, he believes his club has performed well defensively. But he pointed to the fact his club has six shutouts through 15 games, of which only two were accompanied with victories.

"If you get two more goals, suddenly you're sitting at 24 points and in the pack," he said. "But you can't pretend that you have that [production] — we don't. Again, I would say that last game: We had plenty of chances to win that game. We had chances to lose that game, but we had plenty of chances to win that game. We just didn't, and that's a problem."

This week, five RSL players were named to respective provisional rosters for this summer's CONCACAF Gold Cup tournament. Captain Kyle Beckerman and goalkeeper Nick Rimando were named to the provisional 35-man roster for the U.S. men's national team, while striker Alvaro Saborio (Costa Rica) and defenders Elias Vasquez (Guatemala) and Demar Phillips (Jamaica) were also summoned for the three-week tournament starting July 7.

Depending on how far some countries go in the Gold Cup, players could miss as many as six league matches from June 27 to Aug. 1. During that span RSL faces Columbus at home (June 27), Orlando City at home (July 4), at Colorado (July 11), Houston at home (July 18), Sporting Kansas City at home (July 24) and at D.C. United (Aug. 1).

Sprinkle in some potential U.S. Open Cup dates in there as well, should RSL advance.

"International call-ups are never a good time," Waibel said. "On our schedule, international call-ups affect our first team. Is it coming at a bad time? Yeah. If we were sitting in first place, I would tell you it's a bad time."

As RSL faces crucial summer months ahead, in desperate need of putting some sort of streak together, it will be forced to do so without several crucial players.

"That's the world we live in," Waibel said. "I'm glad we have players of that caliber. I'd rather have players of that caliber where you're dealing with them for a little while then players that are nowhere near that caliber. Yeah, you might have them every day, but it's the special players that win championships — it's not the every day player that wins championships. The every-day player was me. You need players like me, but you need special players to actually win it."

-Chris Kamrani

Twitter: @chriskamrani