Struggling Red Bulls face big questions heading into key stretch

New York Red Bulls coach Sandro Schwarz has never been one to get caught up with looking too far down the road.

And the second-year coach wasn’t looking to do that a day before the Red Bulls opened the Leagues Cup tournament against Chivas Guadalajara on Wednesday.

But the Red Bulls find themselves in a precarious situation after 25 league matches this season — on the wrong side of the playoff cutoff as they enter a compact part of their schedule and the stretch run of the MLS calendar.

Over their next five matches, the Red Bulls will participate in the Leagues Cup, Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup and the MLS regular season — a stretch that will include three matches in one week — raising the question of where the team’s priorities lie.

The Leagues Cup, an in-season tournament between teams in Mexico’s Liga MX and MLS that was first introduced in 2019, and the U.S. Open Cup offer a path for the team to qualify for the prestigious Concacaf Champions Cup.

Meanwhile, the Red Bulls have not missed the MLS playoffs in the previous 15 seasons.

Nevertheless, if there was an organizational priority, Schwarz wasn’t tipping his hand during a conversation with The Post.

“I would say it’s not … more MLS or then Open Cup, or Leagues Cup, or something like that,” he said. “For us, the priority is to bring our face on the field every day. That’s the focus and that’s, I think, actually, right now, so important in our situation. To see a chance in every game, to see opportunity in every game, for our confidence to believe in ourselves.”

Since the end of May, things have not been great for the Red Bulls, and a club that shocked the MLS world to reach the MLS Cup Final last winter has recorded just one win over the past two months and fallen back to 10th place, one spot out of the playoff picture, after an ugly 1-0 loss to the Chicago Fire last weekend.

The Red Bulls have been without star Lewis Morgan, who has been out with a quad injury and isn’t expected to return until late August, and Cameron Harper, who is dealing with a knee injury and is out indefinitely.

It has raised concerns about the depth the team has to withstand the injury issues as scoring has been limited, averaging 1.56 goals per match, and their defense has struggled, conceding 17 goals over their past eight matches.

Schwarz described it as “unfair” to try and analyze the roster or the ongoing season when the topic was broached by The Post.

The results — or lack thereof — have left Red Bulls fans even more frustrated, with average attendance dipping from last season and supporters taking to social media, after the team seemingly had raised the bar with their playoff run last season and their first appearance in the league championship game in nearly two decades.

The coach understood that the success of last year brought higher expectations but defended the current group.

“That’s normal. It’s not the first time that I had this experience, to be honest,” Schwarz said about the expectations. “But for this group right now, it’s not fair and we have to do everything to try to give our best. That’s clear. The guys are doing a great job, and we have to handle some situations. … But the expectations are good, but I think it has also every time to be realistic, that’s important. Ambitious, we are very competitive and that’s what I can say we are every day.”

Amid the slump for the Red Bulls and the start of the Leagues Cup, the MLS summer transfer window opened last week and the club has been linked to German striker Timo Werner, who has remained in ongoing negotiations with the Red Bulls about a possible jump to MLS after previously featuring for Tottenham Hotspur and RB Leipzig.

During a pre-match press conference Wednesday, Schwarz said he and the front office have had conversations about bringing in players during the transfer window, but insisted that the change had to come from the group already with the team.

“This is our responsibility, what we have to change and we can change this with our behavior,” he said.