BURTON Albion captain John McGrath thoroughly enjoyed his more advanced midfield role against Oxford United and is hoping manager Paul Peschisolido sticks with the new formation.

McGrath was given the freedom to push on from midfield along with Adam Bolder in the 1-1 draw with Oxford, with new loan signing Lee Lucas was deployed as the holding midfielder.

Bolder scored the Brewers' goal after 13 minutes, thanks to excellent work from McGrath and Andres Gurrieri, and McGrath says the new formation allowed him to be in a position to help create the goal.

"If we were playing 4-4-2, I wouldn't have been in that position because the manager usually likes me to sit on the edge of the box," said McGrath.

"But with Lee sitting, the gaffer gave me the freedom to play more forward and it was good to be involved in the goal.

"I really enjoyed playing further forward because I do want to score more goals and this new formation always allows me to get in scoring positions.

"Paul pulled me and Adam aside a week or so ago and said he wanted us to chip in with goals and, hopefully, we can do that with this formation."

McGrath knows that Peschisolido now has a number of options, especially in midfield and attack, and in terms of formation.

"We have such strength in depth. We have about eight midfielders at the club who are all good enough," said McGrath.

"Once all the strikers are fit, all four will be pushing for a starting place, which means Paul has a lot of options.

"The manager knows how well 4-4-2 works but he also knows that he can change that now. Obviously, the new formation worked very well against Oxford for 45 minutes, so there's always the option to change it up a bit.

"We worked on it in training the week before but it was obviously new for us.

"The passing, along with the movement, was excellent for the first 45 minutes but Oxford changed their style and we found it harder in the second half.

"We want to be making sure that with this formation we can play well for the whole match, or even 75 minutes. That said, we had enough chances against Oxford to win the game in the first half."