Stoke City manager Mark Hughes said that John Walters, Xherdan Shaqiri and Marko Arnautovic made the Potters' new-look three-pronged attack work against Watford's 3-4-3 formation.
The Potters defeated the Hornets 1-0 thanks to a Heurelho Gomes own-goal and climbed to the 11th spot in the league table.
Hughes admitted that the change in formation is something he has worked on previously with his Potters.
"It's not something we hadn't worked on, it would be too dangerous to go into a Premier League game not having worked on the shape," Hughes told Sky Sports.
"We had an idea we might be missing a few personnel early in the week. We worked on it in pre-season because we knew it might be an option for us.
"Formations and make-ups of teams is all well and good but you need the players to execute them. They ran and made it work today."
