Can Sporting KC avoid another late-season plummet in 2015?

As Sporting Kansas City coach Peter Vermes puts it, no two MLS seasons are identical. And after he spent the offseason refashioning his club’s roster, it would be difficult to argue the 2014 and 2015 campaigns are mirror images of each other.

But certain similarities are starting to emerge — unpleasant ones.

In 2014, Sporting KC finished the regular season with only two victories over the final 10 games, a tailspin that started with a home shutout loss against D.C. United on Aug. 23, 2014.

A year later, as Sporting KC prepares for its home game Friday against FC Dallas (6 p.m. on KMCI, Ch. 38), it is in the midst of a five-game winless streak — a stretch that began with a home shutout loss to San Jose on Aug. 19.

Similarities, indeed.

“Even after the first loss to San Jose, it was a little reminiscent of that D.C. game from last year,” midfielder Benny Feilhaber said. “Obviously, there are parallels. With every season, you can find parallels. You just hope you can learn from the past and not let the same thing happen again.”

The most important distinction, of course, is that while 2014 ended with a one-game playoff loss, there is still time to reverse the trend in 2015.

Despite four losses in five matches — interrupted by one draw — Sporting KC, 11-8-8, still sits in fifth place in the Western Conference, with the top six teams slated for the postseason. But Sporting is tied with Portland for the fifth spot, only one point better than seventh-place San Jose.

While it’s rather obvious Sporting isn’t playing its best soccer, perhaps a complete performance against second-place FC Dallas could be enough to right the ship.

“It’s easy to go either way. You can be riding the wave and fall off. Or you can be off the wave and jump in and start riding the wave again,” Vermes said before snapping his fingers. “It can happen like that.”

How? Well, the simplest answer is the defense must return to the form it displayed over the first five months of the season, when it led MLS in goals against average while owning the fewest losses in the league.

The numbers are striking. Sporting KC has allowed 16 goals over the past six matches (2.67 per game) after yielding only 22 in its first 21 matches (1.05 per game). That, too, represents a similar trend to an issue that plagued the club at the end of 2014, even if the manner in which teams are finding the back of the net isn’t necessarily the same.

“When you assess the things that were going right last year, they’re a little different than the things this year,” Feilhaber said. “Last year, it seemed like teams would break on the counter attack and get goals like that. They were playing through us. It was hard to solve that problem.

“Now, I think we just need to clean up the little things, defend set pieces a little better and just do all the little things right, as cliche as it sounds.”

With only eight games left in the regular season, the pressure is starting to mount to turn it around sooner rather than later. And that pressure has produced a distinctly less jovial mood during training.

“It’s frustrating. You lose a game, and the following week is tougher. If you’re winning, everybody is loose, happy and making jokes,” Feilhaber said. “It’s frustrating right now for the players, for coaches and I’m sure for the fans, as well. There’s no doubt there’s a different mood out here.

“But I also think we’re concentrated on trying to believe in what we’ve done. We know it works, because it got us this far.”

This story was originally published September 17, 2015 at 4:16 PM with the headline "Can Sporting KC avoid another late-season plummet in 2015?."