I've noticed it a few times recently with Ole, but thought it was a great idea by SAF to regulary switch the wingers positions.
For what it's worth I think Martial is much more useful to us on the left cutting in and taking on players.I don't see much to Rashford's game to suggest that he's ever going to be a top quality option on the left for us unfortunately. He's only a good option on the left when we're counter attacking and he's got plenty of space to make a direct run into.
Ferguson was one of the first managers to experiment with wrong-sided wingers on the island. The great man was way ahead of his time as far as English football is concerned. You would see plenty of that when both Sharpe and Giggs were at the top of their game. A couple of years later, Beckham broke into the first team and we would see even more experimentation with the positions of the wingers. But one of the things that made Ferguson the greatest manager of all time is the fact that he never "forced" anything to happen. He was always the genius that remained on top of his game by the grace of keeping things simple.
Ferguson wanted his creativity to come from the wide areas, so he played with players whose natural role was to hug the sidelines. Whether it was by cutting inside or beating a defender down the line and crossing the ball, the name of the game was always the same: Use the wide areas to create chances. The options of the opponent determined who would be used and where. And the purpose of the build-up was to generate space for these wide players and give them time on the ball to create. With Keane/Ince he had two midfielders who could break through the lines, unsettle the defence, force it to converge and open up space out wide. With Carrick/Scholes-Giggs, it was the early long diagonal to wingers who had attempted early runs. Even when we had an immobile midfield (in the sense of providing attacking outlets) with Carick-Scholes-Cleverley-Giggs, we would use the wingers to stretch the field and then Rafael/Evra would have productive seasons playing not on the overlap but mostly on the underlap.
I don't think you can get this from Martial and Rashford because they're primarily attacking players and not creators. And it's a better tactic for them to start from central positions and then drift out wide than to have them start a move far away from goal. You may thing i'm splitting hairs here but it makes quite a difference when you want to turn around with the ball and you have a hesitating CB instead of a FB in his natural space to worry about you and when you run at full pace against a back-peddling CB instead again of a FB who is better equipped to deal with this type of situations. Plus it would force Rash and Tony into a creator's role which doesn't suit them and even when they do have good games who's in the box to bear the fruits of the effort?
@Borys
Cheers. After your response, i read my post again and i was afraid i might have been a bit aggressive. Glad this wasn't the case.
Asymmetrical systems are very common, imho. For instance, Pep, despite what people think, used to do it a lot with Iniesta on the left and Messi as a false-9 and with Eto'o wreaking havoc on the opposite side. And he had such a plethora of options that allowed him to use both sides for overloads, de[ending on the opponent. A couple of quick pictures i found on the internet:
Mourinho loves to do it too.
I don't want us to go around in circles on the RW issue. Of course, having someone like Alves instead of AWB would have helped. That much we agree. But given that defences work in unison, i don't believe it's the lack of threat that our opponents feel when AWB has the ball on the right that's doing (most of the) damage. It's the lack of movement and that lack of conviction in tight spaces on the left. If you allow the opposition to dig a trench and defend in it and , you will never break through them. You have to make them commit, draw them in, fool them and give them a dilemma: "If i stick with my man, i'll leave a whole behind. But why should i give a feck when i know that Matic, Fred or Shaw will not move there/will not pass the ball in time for anything to happen and i also know that the forward (behind me) won't bother to take advantage either". That's what i mean.
Better options open up more possibilities. If that's your point, i wholeheartedly agree. But in this system, in these tactics, i feel that a new RW will only take us that far. There are just a few voices on here who claim that, despite the egregious price-tag, Grealish (who operates predominantly on the left side) would be more useful to our cause than Sancho and i agree with them in the sense that he would sweeten up our passing game in congested areas, he would allow Bruno to play closer to the box and to interact with the forwards in much more dangerous areas and he would be a nuisance for any defence with his constant movement.