SAN JOSE — The Spring Spiral — aka a seven-game winless streak — has everyone on edge at Earthquakes Way.

The players feel it. So do coaches and management. And fans, oh boy, could they ever feel the sting of a star-crossed Major League Soccer team that is 1-5-2 with five measly points.

All the preseason enthusiasm about a playoff-ready lineup has vanished like a pint at a London soccer pub.

If something doesn’t change immediately San Jose might as well focus on yet another reset for 2019. The situation is that dire as the Quakes play two road games in four days starting Saturday at Minnesota United. Lose both and the Texas-size hole they have dug will grow exponentially as the team is playing four of five on the road.

It’s not too early to pray for a minor miracle considering the 0-3-1 away record this season and 3-12-2 road mark last year.

The frustration spilled out of the locker room Saturday after San Jose coughed up a late goal in a 1-0 home defeat to Portland. The result left the Earthquakes with a demoralizing 1-2-1 home record as the team has not won in nine weeks.

“Tonight we played too naive,” defender Florian Jungwirth said. “It was nothing to do with men’s soccer; it was youth soccer what we played, to be honest.”

The upheaval can be traced to general manager Jesse Fioranelli’s arrival in January 2017. Then-president Dave Kaval hoped to reshape the team with a forward-thinking soccer executive who could recruit strong foreign talent while building a singular system with the youth academy.

He picked Fioranelli over finalists Lee Congerton, a former Sunderland sporting director, Dennis te Kloese, the Mexican Football Federation youth director, Tab Ramos, the U.S. under-20 coach and Chris Leitch, the Quakes’ technical director.

Fioranelli, a Swiss man who had worked at AS Roma, has implemented a plan to change the Earthquakes’ style of play. His philosophy is counter to the old guard who believes the road to the MLS playoffs takes American-style grit that Europeans struggle to grasp.

The Quakes have had three coaches under Fiornaelli’s short reign so far. Also, 22 of the 29 current players have come since his hire as well as president Tom Fox and three of rookie coach Mikael Stahre’s assistants.

The Quakes have only three true veterans inside the locker room to help all of these newcomers digest the nuances of MLS.

Stahre acknowledged the difficulty of uniting a group in the face of sweeping changes. But the Swedish coach this week talked generically when asked to pinpoint the lineup adjustments needed for the team to win immediately. He mentioned the game’s complexities, concluding that every aspect of play needs improvement.

More forthright explanations about the new direction have been left to the Quakes’ core leaders, such as 10-year veteran Quincy Amarikwa.

“It’s thought to be going the right way,” he said. “But you don’t know if it is the right way until the results prove it was the right way.

“Do I think we have what is necessary to be a winning team? Yes.

“Do I think given enough time we can figure it out? Yes.

“But do I believe that everyone will buy in long enough to see the results? That remains to be seen.”

Fans might be the first to lose hope. The team failed to sell out 18,000-seat Avaya Stadium for the past two home games. That had never happened since the facility opened in 2015.

Fioranelli has launched a plan that he believes will keep San Jose competitive today while cultivating local talent for the future. The 2018 roster is among the Earthquakes’ best since it won the Supporters’ Shield six years ago.

“It’s the most talented, but it is not translating on the field,” said Amarikwa, a reserve forward.

“Our job is to produce and get results and that’s what we’re judged by. And when you’re not doing it no one cares what the excuses are. They just want solutions to the problem.”

Fioranelli needs time to build a culture that can reverse a decade of mediocrity. But the disastrous 2018 start might undermine the effort. The patience of the club’s stakeholders is being tested, particularly with recent expansion teams in Atlanta and Los Angeles already looking stronger.

“We haven’t put together the right things at the right time of any game the right way,” captain Chris Wondolowski said. “One side of the ball isn’t going to be enough. Doing one thing isn’t enough at any position. Our message: We’ve scored goals but we’ve conceded a lot.”

San Jose has scored 12 goals, which is close to the Western Conference average of 12.6 per game. But it also has allowed 2.25 goals more than the division average.

Perhaps the most maddening of all statistics is the Quakes’ inability to hold leads in three of the first five games. After scoring first, San Jose lost to New York City FC and tied Philadelphia and Houston.

“We know it is a long season,” Wondolowski said of having plenty of games to recover. “But we also said we can’t rely on that. It’s time to look internally and everyone needs to raise their game.”

Wondolowski, the league’s No. 2 all-time scorer, equated the current mess to his worst MLS experience — the 2014 season when the Quakes finished last in the West with a 6-13-11 record.

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But this year’s team also has not lost any game by more than one goal to offer faint hope in Fioranelli’s vision.

“It does feel really close,” said Wondolowski, 35. “But it feels far away at times. Sometimes you get a litmus test and we’re not quite there.”

Not by any stretch of the imagination.