"Sir Alex Ferguson saw it the same way, drawing up a loose midfield diamond formation with an extra defensive focus on the right-hand side."
Welbeck always drifts wide, in a diamond. Nothing new there. First he was drifting towards the right, then the left.
Both are central midfielders as well as the strikers drift in a diamond. Today it worked the same way except the fact that we wanted to keep RVP central, because he is RVP.
I don't know why you're taking that site as gospel, this is what they say about Rafael; "On paper, it looked like Bale was set to romp his flank, considering Rafael's suspect defensive capabilities and commitment. The Brazilian is improving every game, but he's not ready to take on someone of Bale's calibre." Rafael has clearly won battles against Bale before so that scentence is just wrong and with the stenghts in rafaels defensive game being defending against the likes of Bale it shows a lack of knowledge on rafael.
Secondly again drifting wide is not the same as it being you're tactical position. The article clearly says Welbeck and clev both started wide, so presumably they're playing the same roles on their respective flanks, and then they swapped flanks. Again don't see how that fits in to welbeck playing up top.
That's not to say that article is wrong, it makes some good observations but I don't think it was a diamond, certainly it didn't look anything like the diamonds we've seen in the past, it didn't look anything like the diamond we played against west ham. Also if we were playing jones right as a diamond would suggest, why not swap him and rafael, given rafael is clearly stronger going forward, and given we only just did that in midweek.
It wasn't a flat out traditional 4411, I'll give you that, Clev certainly tucked in, but that doesn't take away from the fact that welbeck and clev both played in the wider roles, with rvp as a lone striker and kagawa in the hole.