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Sandy • Jeff Cassar went through training drills along with his players Thursday morning at America First Field. The second-year Real Salt Lake head coach dribbled around cones, took touches around the yellow mannequins scattered around the training pitch and eventually jumped in on a scrimmage playing striker.

Only two more training sessions remain in this 2015 season in which RSL lost the right to have a say in MLS postseason play for the first time since the 2007 season. Once assistant coach Daryl Shore blew his whistle ending training Thursday, Cassar spoke with young players like Justen Glad and Phanuel Kavita about positioning.

He sat on the bench on the far side of the field with defender Demar Phillips, engaged in a lengthy conversation. And when players began to file out and head back to Rio Tinto Stadium, Cassar was asked if this season served as a humbling reminder of how quickly sustained success can vanish.

"Humbling? Yeah, sure," he told the Tribune. "I think there's times where everyone is going to dip and flow, but we have a plan for how we want to improve. It shows that we need to improve, both on and off the field. So that's going to be key, but this league is becoming so hard to win [in]. Sometimes you have to go through these things to realize the little things turn into a lot."

Afterward he said, "I hate that we missed the playoffs."

Cassar understands the frustration from an RSL fan base grown accustomed to being postseason regulars. It's a lofty expectation set in motion by those who started the seven-year-long streak in 2008 and won an MLS Cup title a year later. Sunday's regular-season finale in Seattle will end an RSL season earlier than ever before since the club moved to Sandy and into its own soccer-specific stadium.

After that? There will be questions swirling in what could be another busy offseason.

Asked if he's concerned about his job security, Cassar said that's not up to him.

"That's out of my hands," he said. "I know how much I care about these players and this club and the staff. I know how hard myself and the staff work to get better. We're not the final product, and we're going to continue to get better."

General manager Craig Waibel told the Tribune earlier this week the coaching staff will undergo a final evaluation next week.

"[We'll] sit down mid-week when we get home and have a slow moment to decompress a little bit and then we'll go over kind of evaluation of the season, from [Cassar's] perspective, from my perspective," Waibel said. "We'll get everything together on Wednesday as an organization, we'll meet with USL, MLS, both staffs and go over each season individually and we'll take the information from there and we'll make sense of it."

The "complete evaluation" — as Waibel called it — will go over game-by-game lineup coaches, substitution patterns and results throughout the course of the season among other things.

A portion of the fan base has voiced anger and dissatisfaction with Cassar. Some have called for his job in recent months. Cassar has one more year left on the deal he signed in Dec. 2013, when he replaced Jason Kreis after the MLS Cup final.

So what has this taxing 2015 season been like for the RSL coach?

"I take full responsibility for everything that's gone on — except for the good," he said. "I don't ever take responsibility for the good. I would say it's been a year of experiences. You can talk about them, but when you go through them, you have to fight, you have to figure it out, you have to figure out what work and what hasn't. I think this year has thrown everything at myself and the staff, and the team.

"Without a doubt I think that's going to make us better for going through [these challenges], but you go through them to learn them. I'm not happy we went through them, but I think it was great for our education to better ourselves and realize what we need to do to get better, and how we're going to do it."

-Chris Kamrani

Twitter: @chriskamrani