Welcome to the offseason, Real Salt Lake

Welcome to the offseason, Real Salt Lake.

To really know how we got here, it’s important to remember where we started.

2015 was an unmistakably bad year — worse than this one, if you can believe it. 2016 promised something better: We’d made it through the CONCACAF Champions League group stage, and we had an extremely difficult tie against Mexican standouts Tigres.

We lost that one, but you know what? It was close. That was better than anyone expected.

We didn’t even start the season in bad form. In true “we just pushed in CCL” fashion, we started really strongly — and we dominated in one stat: red cards. We escaped that, then rounded into a nice summer form — it wasn’t perfect, but we were very clearly in the running for the Supporters Shield.

That summer form transitioned perfectly into an immediate collapse. The final matches of the season resulted in a grand total of zero wins — zero. That’s not exactly peaking as they head into the playoffs.

And now, we’re left with the team crashing out in spectacular fashion to an LA Galaxy side that, at times, looked immensely beatable. It wasn’t as bad as 2014 — that 5-0 loss is still ringing in each of our eardrum, I’m sure.

And here we are. Jeff Cassar is nearly certain to summarily exit the team following the end of his contract. We’re all unhappy about all this. While we trudge through yet another long offseason, let’s remember that: Nobody’s happy about how this happened again. Nobody’s particularly happy about our coaching. Let’s stay civil as we go through all of this, because that’s all we have left.