Coach’s Quotes: Petke frustrated by RSL’s finishing, remaining patient

Real Salt Lake’s loss, while not the worst of the season by a significant margin, doesn’t exactly inspire us with confidence.

Mike Petke, on the other hand, is ever the realist. His main issue? It was all about not finishing chances.

Yes, absolutely clinical. Not only did we not convert them, some of them we completely missed. We whiffed on it. The possession we had, the danger we had … give credit to Jason's team. It seemed like every cross that we had, more than fifty percent of them were blocked, great one-on-one defense. A lot of their crosses got through, but at the end of the day the coaching staff and players weren't nervous at all at half time. We had a lot of opportunities and we knew a lot more would come and then it just didn't come.

That’s good stuff, Mr. Petke. It’s also an interesting point about chances not coming: In the second half, we took only three shots. We had eight in the first half. As a coach, that’s got to be frustrating.

...One of the couple things I can take a positive out of is that we worked on a couple of specific things this week, and one of them was changing the point of attack quickly and directly, because mainly the staple with a Jason Kreis team is to trap on the sideline. ... I think we did that and had some very good plays with Brooks and Chris Wingert overlapping, and Plata coming in and Danny Acosta getting forward.

Good positive stuff.

I was hoping not to play Albert tonight to be honest with you because he just arrived yesterday morning. So of course he will probably be ready to go, but everyone else, we are going to have to wait and see how they came out of this game.

It’s a reasonably tight turnaround, Friday to Tuesday. That’ll be interesting.

Anyway, here’s the real meat and potatoes stuff. Petke was asked about transfers.

I have kind of been quiet on certain things so I will give you a little bit more now. It is going to take a while, even Jason Kreis was telling me as we were walking in from the tunnel, the first year and a half he had this team, it is going to take time to make this my team.

I am sure some people will not see the positives ... The only two games I did not see a positive in were Dallas and Houston. Everything else I have seen very big positives, and it is going to take a while, and I am okay with that, I am not shaking and panicking.

The only part of me that is shaking and panicking is my competitiveness. We have 5 wins since I took over and that has nothing to do with me. Before that I feel like I have to remind people of certain things. What is going on, the team hasn't won since August and that is all on the players, I am not taking any credit for that. So there are more positives, as far as the strikers specifically of course we are looking for, not just a striker, we are looking for 11 positions and we have got to go out and get them.

I love that. It’s my new motto.

“It is going to take a while, and I am okay with that.”

Great stuff. Also, I love Jason Kreis. That is all.

Petke’s comments are, as always, provided by RSL Communications.