Something about yesterdays game kept sticking out to me. It seems when we find any vein of attractive football it lends itself to when our players find comfortable spaces to operate in. That's a pretty basic concept but has actually been pretty lacking this year. I think what worked last year and this year has to do with the responsibilities that were put on our players.

When we actually put up our formation we all know that they don't operate rigidly in those spaces. In reality they operated yesterday more like this.

I think this is interesting because a lot of what works about this is the natural roles that our players filled. When I look at this what I actually see is a 3-5-2. Something like this

I think if we look at it this way when it comes to some of the underlying principles for defending and attacking in each of these positions we can see why we are effective with our players in these roles.

First consider the spaces we operate in and shifting the axis of our team in the 3-5-2 formation. It looks similar and maybe sheds light to why we found success in these spaces. The axis shift makes up for the deficiencies our squad has.

The right side is both our defensively strong side and the side in which we want to build our attacking play from. Our left side is the side in which our attackers come from. Our best right footed strikers (Martial & Rashford) that have pace and ability to dribble at defenders are stacked on the leftside. Rooney and Mata both are place in spaces that give them room to operate. Lingard coming from deep allows him space to shuttle the ball up the right side and hides his inability to make good runs. Schniderlin can operate defensively without having to make the difficult deep passes that he struggles with due to playing almost side by side with blind at times. Valencia is an athletic freak even at his current age and can cover the ground to be an attacking threat better than any of our fullbacks which means he can come from a deeper position. Darmian can stay around the midfield line and pick his moments to wander forward in support. Smalling has the speed and strength to sweep up behind the rest of our squad as a last defender and therefore can be responsible for such a large space behind our defensive shape.

Take yesterday with a grain of salt Palace is a weak side missing players, but time and time again when our players wander into positions with space our level of play is night and day difference to the stale rigidity that none of us like watching. I hope we continue to have this shift in our axis that helps create more successful football.

I think back to that small stretch last year where Fellaini played in that advanced position on the left side just like where Rooney sat all game. We had Mata and Herrera and Valencia linking up on the right side. I could see us making that push this year but we've got to find the spaces to operate in.