Last place and hating it: What’s happened to Sporting KC and what can be done about it?

This season hasn’t gone Sporting Kansas City’s way. Far from it, in fact.

Injuries and poor play find the local Major League Soccer team in last place, with the fewest goals scored and worst goal differential in the league. Fifteen games remain in the MLS regular season.

Sporting KC manager Peter Vermes knew things would be tough when Alan Pulido and Gadi Kinda were lost for the year because of injuries.

But as Vermes sees it, that’s still no excuse for hitting rock-bottom.

“I knew we were going to miss them,” he said Tuesday. “I think that those are two really important guys for any team, but that’s not an excuse. The guys (who are healthy and playing) have to find a way. We’ve been in games.”

The manager pointed to Sunday’s game against the New York Red Bulls as an example. Sporting (4-11-4) dominated the flow of play and created multiple scoring chances, but healthy stars Johnny Russell and Daniel Salloi were unable to convert.

In the end, a lack of attention to detail while defending a routine set piece spelled Sporting’s 11th defeat in 19 games — and the club’s third straight loss at Children’s Mercy Park.

“It’s mental concentration, execution, not paying attention to detail,” Vermes said. “Maybe sometimes somebody has to take charge in that moment and say, ‘Out!’ It’s a number of things, but it’s everyone’s fault.

“It’s not one guy, it’s everyone. Everyone is a problem.”

Everyone is a problem.

Three of the last four goals that Sporting has conceded resulted from a simple ball to the back post, either from the run of play or off a set piece.

This is all the more frustrating to Vermes because Sporting KC has been training heavily for such scenarios during practices this season.

“Maybe we need to do a lot more,” he said. “Maybe we just need to spend a whole day doing it. That would be absolutely a waste of time, because it’s a thing that you work on all the time in all the things that you do.”

Vermes was asked about the squad’s preparation for Saturday’s match at Montreal.

“If you want to go get points — whether it’s home or away — you have to defend well and you have to be concentrated and pay attention to those details that are a part of the game,” he said. “And we have to get better with that if we’re going to find any success in any of our games moving forward.”

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the uber-competitive Vermes still believes Sporting KC has a shot of making the playoffs this season.

It would take an incredible turnaround in results, no question. But until they’re 100% out of the running — and they’re getting precariously close — Vermes indicated that Sporting KC’s current malaise is solvable.

“I still maintain, even though we have quite a few guys out that are important to the way we play, the team is still capable of making the playoffs,” he said.

“You have to clean up those things that I talked about. It doesn’t matter who you are in this game: If you don’t defend well and don’t pay attention to the details of the game that are necessary to win, you’re always going to get beat. You always are.”