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Transpired Ruben Amorim endured a loss to lower-league opposition. He weathered a decisive continental showpiece against one of the worst Tottenham teams for many years. He could survive losing at home against domestic rivals, finishing 15th, his rigid approach, laying waste to some of the club’s best academy products, a poor winning percentage, calling his team the poorest the club has ever seen. But there was one adversary against whom Ruben Amorim was not permitted to tango. If you challenge the sporting director, and you best not miss.

Unfortunately, similar to numerous top-flight right-back in Blackburn’s title-winning 1994-95 season, the coach took on the executive and seems to have failed. The most distracted of readers will notice the irony here: a coach who frequently berated his squad for losing individual battles crumbling in the face of the intense pressure and formidable presence of a the Premier League’s most feared football executives.

In truth, this whole bruising episode seems to paint the director in a whole new light. It may have been tempting, based on his nine months of experience with the Saints, to regard Jason Wilcox as merely a functionary in the United exoskeleton: a man who owed his position largely to his close relationship with his former boss Omar Berrada as any demonstrable skill. How wrong we all were. In brilliantly outsmarting United’s feted head coach, just as he bested the hapless a previous executive earlier, Jason Wilcox has demonstrated to be among football's strategic masterminds: a strategic mind of which United’s mid-table rivals will now be rightly wary.

A Tactical Clash Over System and Philosophy

To illustrate, it was Jason Wilcox who being involved in the leadership that appointed the 3-4-3 fundamentalist the coach in the first place, played a key role in attempting to convince Amorim to abandon his favored 3-4-3. Unsurprisingly, these pleas met a certain resistance. But perhaps such directives hold greater authority when delivered by a man with the unimpeachable football pedigree of Jason Wilcox, holder of three England caps and a role in a championship team decades past.

Perhaps in time he may be persuaded to outline his reasoning publicly. Maybe one day questions may arise regarding why the coach 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 of this sport – individuals such as Jason Wilcox – simply operate at a level exceeding our mundane comprehension. If he ever did speak, probably we would perceive is a series of high-frequency signals and four-dimensional whirring. Wanting is not equivalent to being ready to comprehend it.

An Ultimate Power In Command

Naturally, in training our focus on Jason Wilcox we overlook the true genius behind the modern United throne. The director is, after all, simply carrying out the commands of his ultimate line manager Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who privately has emphasized his desire for a back four. According to reports, Ratcliffe has also proposed playing Bryan Mbeumo in a wing-back role. The owner is eager for the club to embrace analytics and analytics. According to ESPN, during a leadership summit early in his investment, he declared that the team's approach to football “shall be decided by this group”.

After all, Sir Jim is an expert in this technical football matters, drawing from his previous experience in petrochemicals and yachting. Most importantly he remains incredibly rich, and as we all know, the rich are the best of us: more insightful, sagacious, strategically brilliant, simply better. Whom else would you trust to manage an enlightened programme of cost-cutting, the building of a modern arena that looks similar to someone’s leftover knitting, the signing of a new striker?

The New Football Order: Directors Above Managers

This is a trend we are increasingly seeing at the elite levels of the game. Historically, clubs foolishly delegated major sporting choices to low-level employees like managers, talent spotters – players themselves. Perhaps it was once feasible for an up-and-coming, visionary coach with a philosophy and drive to join a club and see their vision supported to fruition. Yet how many companies have these guys set up? What number of large-scale layoffs have they managed? Better by far to invest genuine authority where it rightly belongs: the executive class, the casually dressed executives, the individuals with the jaw-dropping LinkedIn profiles. Better by far to determine the strategy in the boardroom and hire someone who can tailor their methods accordingly. If managers were once chefs, they have become more akin to Deliveroo drivers: not really creating the product, yet finally accountable should it be delivered poorly or fails to meet standards.

Nowadays, a coach's role has become not about defining the vision and more about marketing it: the front-facing representative on the front desk, the visible figurehead for a club they have minimal power to influence. A coach at Chelsea leads a team of very young players into Europe and secures two medium-sized trophies, and essentially gets sacked for speaking out. A manager at Celtic finds his standing damaged while those individuals who appointed him continue to make errors indefinitely.

A Modern Corporate Game: Accountability Only for the Few

And possibly in a small way this represents neoliberalism at work: the elevation of a privileged elite who can never be wrong, whose choices are always untouchable, whose errors can invariably be resolved by sacking without justification. Hire the 3-4-3 coach only to dismiss him for using too much 3-4-3. Hire the project manager and then bin them for taking excessive time. And most importantly show gratitude; for the incremental increases in ticket costs, for the latest summer signings, for the reality that the adults – regardless of their expertise – are in charge.