Are the wheels falling off at Real Salt Lake?

It's sure starting to look that way, after the team staggered through its most lethargic and spiritless performance of the season, at a time when it needed points the most.

Even coach Jason Kreis -- typically so careful not to publicly blast his team -- took the rare step of criticizing his players for a lack of effort in a 3-1 loss at New England on Sunday, and suggested serious lineup changes could be in order when the team tries to claw its way back into the Major League Soccer playoff picture when it plays Chivas USA at Rio Tinto Stadium on Wednesday night.

"We'll need to take a good hard look at who's going to be on the field," he said. "We can't go with guys who don't show the effort."

Not if it hopes to win, anyway.

But the postseason picture is looking ever bleaker for RSL, after its nightmare performance against the Revs shattered the sense that at least its defense was playing well.

It already had left valuable points on the field by giving away a man-advantage and settling for a scoreless draw at home against Houston the previous weekend.

Yet instead of charging out against the Revs, hungry to make up for it, RSL showed painfully little fight, conceding two easy goals by halftime and ultimately falling to 1-8-2 on the road this season. True, it was playing without three regular starters -- midfielder Clint Mathis and defender Jamison Olave, both suspended, and striker Yura Movsisyan -- but that didn't do much to mitigate the startling conclusion that Kreis reached.

"We hadn't had a game where I felt like we just had no chance," Kreis said, "and I'd say ... we didn't."

What's more, midfielder Javier Morales suffered a groin injury and left the game -- he's officially "doubtful" to play against Chivas -- and the team continues to deal with the distraction surrounding striker Yura Movsisyan, who has agreed to join Randers FC in Denmark after the MLS season is over.

While Movsisyan has not publicly complained about his situation, he has made little secret of the fact that he's not happy that RSL did not accept a buyout offer from Randers that would have allowed him to join his new club immediately. Asked last month how he felt about that, he told reporters that "it's difficult to answer that question, because whatever I say is going to sound bad, and I'm sure you guys will make it even more juicy, so I'll just not answer that question."

That has led to suspicion on both sides, and commitment questions in the locker room.

Movsisyan was left home from the game at New England, for what the team said was his lingering shoulder injury.

But Movsisyan's agent said Movsisyan was healthy enough to play against the Revs, and that the team is punishing him because Randers has not suitably increased its offer to buy out Movsisyan's contract before it expires at the end of the year. Agent Patrick McCabe said the Danish club did make "one last offer" last week, but that RSL rejected it, while general manager Garth Lagerwey said Randers never improved its offer.

"There's never been any significant movement from them," he said.

Players have said the turmoil hasn't affected their play -- midfielder Kyle Beckerman told Goal.com after the New England game that "we've sorted it out" -- but RSL still has scored only two goals in its last four games since the MLS All-Star Game, and only one on its own. Its lone goal against New England came accidentally off the foot of the Revs' Darrius Barnes.

It all adds up to some dim playoff prospects, if Lagerwey has his math right.

He believes the team will need 43 points to make the playoffs. RSL has 27, with eight games left. That means it must win at least four of its remaining games -- in that case, it also would have to draw the other four -- in order to get the 16 points it needs to return to the postseason.

Much more likely, it needs to win five of its last eight games, and add at least one draw.

Impossible?

Not necessarily, which is why Lagerwey did not want to dwell on the loss to the Revs, saying "you never want to lose a game twice." He knows that if RSL can beat Chivas and then win at Kansas City on Saturday, it will have the six points from its current three-games-in-seven-days stretch that it felt it needed, and have a much brighter outlook on the stretch run.

"There's no reason to give up now," Lagerwey said. "We're just going to keep fighting."

mcl@sltrib.com