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Sandy • Five games into the 2015 season, Real Salt Lake, all things considered, is in fairly good shape. RSL is 2-0-3 and sits at nine points, coming off its second-consecutive road shutout in Saturday's 0-0 draw at Sporting Kansas City. The club remains without last year's leading scorer, forward Joao Plata, who is recovering from his foot fracture suffered in late January and have been without some key contributors early on this year due to other injuries or international duty.

Oh, yeah. That new system is still working the kinks out, too. Defensively, RSL hasn't broken once on the road so far. Three outings, three shutouts with a victory and two draws. But it's on the other side of the ball where critics around MLS want to see RSL establish itself. The league and its followers grew used to the slow, meticulous build-up RSL was so noted for in the diamond midfield approach.

To RSL's credit, they've maneuvered through the struggles of adaptation enough to get a result every outing so far this season. The next test is against league-leading Vancouver Saturday night at Rio Tinto Stadium.

"Sometimes you have a really good performance and the result doesn't go your way, but results have gone our way so far and I think that's a testament to just the players in this group," right back Tony Beltran said. "Even though the soccer might not be there yet, we know how to win in this league and MLS and that's crucial now."

RSL coach Jeff Cassar said he looked up some statistics prior to training Tuesday in Sandy. RSL has six goals in five matches, which is tied for fourth in the league. The club has conceded four, tied for third-least in the league.

"That's pretty good … considering we have a lot of players out, we're doing some different things, but our mentality's right. We're going on the road — three shutouts is pretty much unheard of — we come home and we hear, 'You haven't scored on the road,' well, that means the other teams haven't scored at home and that's a difficult thing to do," Cassar said. "I think our mentality's right and as we keep getting better and smarter and more efficient, we're going to be able to get results on the road, which we did in San Jose."

As RSL continues to grow accustomed to the 4-3-3 approach, efficiency will need to improve if results are to continued to be maximized. Midfielder Luke Mulholland said he's been pleased with the way his team has played up to this point.

"I think the goals will come in good time," he said. "I don't think we need to start pointing fingers at the formation or the forwards not putting in [the work], it's a team effort when we get those draws on the road and it's a team effort when we get the home wins as well. I'm not too stressed about anything. I think the media's making quite a big deal about it. I don't think it's a big deal. I think the formation's going to come good, I think we just got to give it time."

With a victory over the Whitecaps Saturday, RSL would improve to 3-0-3, halfway to its 12-game unbeaten start of 6-0-6 in 2014. Beltran, not surprisingly, said the unbeaten factor doesn't take hold of anyone's mind. It's the fact they've been able to win or draw under several different circumstances that's the difference right now.

"It's a big mental boost, especially because we're going through a few growing pains with the new formation," he said. "We're not going out each game saying, 'Well, we don't want to lose this game, we want to keep the streak going,' but we just want to keep improving soccer-wise."

-Chris Kamrani

Twitter: @chriskamrani