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Iturns out the manager endured losing against Grimsby. He weathered a decisive European final against a particularly poor Spurs sides for many years. He could survive losing at home against domestic rivals, finishing 15th, his rigid approach, undermining some of the club’s best homegrown talent, a poor winning percentage, labeling the squad the worst the club has ever seen. But there was a single opponent against whom Ruben Amorim was not permitted to tango. If you challenge the sporting director, you had better succeed.

Unfortunately, similar to numerous top-flight defender in Blackburn’s title-winning 1994-95 season, the coach came at the executive and appears to have failed. Even the most distracted of readers will notice the irony here: a coach who often railed his squad for losing individual battles crumbling in the face of the intense pressure and animal charisma of one of England's top division's most intimidating sporting directors.

In truth, this entire bruising episode appears to portray the director in a whole new light. Perhaps it might have been easy, based on his nine months in a similar role at Southampton, to regard Jason Wilcox as little more than a drudge within the club's structure: an individual who owed his position as much to his close relationship with ex-colleague Omar Berrada rather than any verifiable talent. How mistaken we all were. By masterfully outmanoeuvring United’s feted manager, as he outmanoeuvred the hapless Dan Ashworth before him, Jason Wilcox has demonstrated to be among football's true generals: a strategic mind of which the club's mid-table rivals will now be rightly wary.

A Tactical Conflict Regarding Formation & Philosophy

To illustrate, this was Jason Wilcox who having been part of the leadership that appointed the rigid 3-4-3 advocate Amorim in the first place, played a key role in attempting to convince Amorim to abandon his favored formation. Unsurprisingly, these entreaties were resisted. However, these judgements carry more weight when delivered by a man of a man the unimpeachable football pedigree he possesses, a veteran of international appearances and a contributor to a title-winning side decades past.

Maybe eventually he might agree to outline his thought processes to the rest of us. Perhaps at some point questions may arise why Amorim is walking away with full compensation, with no penalty clause in place. But Jason Wilcox speaks rarely in public, for excellent reasons. The true intellectuals in football – men like Jason Wilcox – simply operate at a level exceeding our prosaic understanding. If he ever did speak, most likely we would perceive is a series of high-frequency signals and four-dimensional whirring. Wanting is not the same as being ready to comprehend it.

An Ultimate Power In the Throne

But of course, by focusing our attention on Jason Wilcox we are obscuring the true genius behind the modern United throne. The director is, in reality, merely executing the directives of his ultimate superior the billionaire owner, who in private has emphasized his desire for a four-man defense. It is reported, the owner has also proposed playing Bryan Mbeumo in a wing-back role. Ratcliffe is keen for the club to embrace data science and analytics. Per reports, in an executive meeting soon after his minority ownership, he announced that United’s style to football “will be determined in this room”.

Ultimately, Ratcliffe is a specialist in these intricate footballing stuff, drawing from his background in industry and sailing. Most importantly he is incredibly rich, and it is known, the wealthy are the best of us: more perceptive, sagacious, more tactically astute, simply superior. Who else would you trust to oversee a strategic plan of austerity, the construction of a new stadium that looks a lot like an abstract design, the acquisition of a new striker?

The New Football Order: Executives Above Coaches

This represents a shift we are increasingly seeing at the elite levels football. For decades, teams mistakenly entrusted big footballing decisions to subordinate staff such as coaches, scouts – players themselves. Maybe previously feasible for a young, innovative manager with ideas and drive to go into a club and see their vision through to completion. Yet how many businesses have these guys established? How many large-scale layoffs have they managed? Far preferable to invest genuine authority where it rightly belongs: the leadership tier, the casually dressed executives, the individuals with impressive LinkedIn profiles. It is wiser to decide the strategy in the boardroom and hire someone who will adapt their offering to suit. If managers were once chefs, they are now more akin to delivery personnel: not really responsible for the product, but still finally accountable should it be delivered cold or fails to meet standards.

In the meantime, their job is increasingly less about defining the vision and more about marketing it: the front-facing representative of the operation, the public face of an organisation they have minimal power to change. Enzo Maresca leads a team of very young players into Europe and wins domestic cups, and essentially gets sacked for talking. Wilfried Nancy sees his standing damaged while the people who hired him continue to make errors indefinitely.

The Neoliberal Game: Responsibility Only for the Coaches

And perhaps in a small way this is simply neoliberalism in action: the rise of a gilded elite who are infallible, whose choices are always untouchable, whose errors can invariably be sacked away without justification. Appoint the system coach and then fire him for playing excessively that system. Hire the process guy and then discard him for requiring excessive time. And most importantly be grateful; for the incremental increases in ticket costs, for the latest summer signings, for the fact that the adults – however well qualified – are in charge.