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Turns out Ruben Amorim was able to withstand defeat by lower-league opposition. Survive a decisive European final versus a particularly poor Spurs sides for many years. He withstood losing at home against domestic rivals, a lowly league position, the tactical inflexibility, undermining some of the club’s best academy products, the 32% win rate, calling his team the poorest the club has ever seen. Yet, there existed a single opponent against whom Ruben Amorim would not be allowed to dance. If you challenge the sporting director, you had better succeed.

Unfortunately, like many a Premiership defender in Blackburn’s title-winning 1994-95 season, the coach came at Jason Wilcox and appears to have missed. Even the most casual observer can see the paradoxical situation: a manager who frequently berated his squad for losing individual battles crumbling in the face of the intense pressure and formidable presence of one of the Premier League’s most intimidating sporting directors.

In truth, this entire painful saga seems to paint Jason Wilcox in a different perspective. Perhaps it might have been tempting, based on his nine months in a similar role with the Saints, to view him as merely a drudge within the club's structure: a man whose appointment was due as much to his friendship with his former boss a fellow executive rather than any verifiable talent. How mistaken everyone was. In brilliantly outmanoeuvring United’s feted manager, just as he bested the hapless a previous executive before him, he has proved himself as one of football's strategic masterminds: a tactical intellect of which the club's mid-table rivals will now be rightly wary.

A Tactical Clash Regarding Formation and Philosophy

To illustrate, this was the director who having been part of 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 ditch his favored formation. Naturally, these entreaties met a certain resistance. But perhaps such directives carry more weight when issued by a man with the impeccable football pedigree of Jason Wilcox, holder of three England caps and a role in a championship team from 31 years ago.

Maybe eventually he may be persuaded to explain his thought processes to the rest of us. Maybe one day he might be asked why Amorim is departing with full compensation, with no compensation reduction clause activated. The director speaks rarely in public, and with very good reason. The real thinkers in football – men like him – function on a plane exceeding our prosaic understanding. Were he to speak, most likely all we would hear would be high-frequency signals and four-dimensional whirring. Wanting is not the same as being ready to receive.

An Supreme Authority Behind Command

But of course, in training our focus on Jason Wilcox we are obscuring the real power behind the club's current leadership. The director is, in reality, merely executing the commands of his ultimate superior Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who privately has emphasized his desire for a back four. According to reports, the owner has also proposed playing Bryan Mbeumo as a right wing-back. Ratcliffe is keen for United to embrace data science and metrics. According to ESPN, during a leadership summit soon after his minority ownership, he declared that the team's approach to football “will be decided in this room”.

After all, Ratcliffe is an expert in these intricate footballing stuff, leveraging his previous experience in petrochemicals and yachting. Above all he remains immensely wealthy, and it is known, the rich are the best of us: more perceptive, sagacious, more tactically astute, fundamentally better. Who else would you trust to oversee an enlightened programme of austerity, the building of a modern arena that looks a lot like someone’s leftover knitting, the acquisition of Benjamin Sesko?

A New Soccer Hierarchy: Executives Over Managers

This represents a shift that is becoming prevalent at the elite levels football. For decades, teams mistakenly delegated major sporting choices to subordinate staff such as coaches, talent spotters – even footballers. Perhaps it was once feasible for an up-and-coming, visionary coach with ideas and drive to go into a club and implement their plan supported to fruition. But how many companies have such individuals set up? How many large-scale layoffs have they managed? Better by far to place genuine authority where it rightly belongs: the executive class, the open-necked shirt brigade, the individuals with the jaw-dropping LinkedIn profiles. Better by far to decide the strategy in the boardroom and appoint someone who will adapt their offering to suit. If managers were formerly chefs, they are now more akin to Deliveroo drivers: not really creating the food, yet finally accountable should it be delivered cold or leaks out of the box.

In the meantime, their job has become not about defining the vision and more about marketing it: the receptionist of the operation, the visible figurehead for a club they can do little to influence. A coach at Chelsea leads a team of literal children into the Champions League and wins two medium-sized trophies, and effectively gets sacked for speaking out. A manager at Celtic finds his reputation ruined while the people who appointed him live to blunder another day.

A Modern Corporate Football: Responsibility for the Coaches

And possibly on some microcosmic level this represents neoliberalism in action: the elevation of a privileged overclass who can never be wrong, whose decisions remain sacrosanct, whose errors can invariably be sacked away without explanation. Hire the system coach and then dismiss them for playing excessively that system. Hire the project manager and then discard him for taking excessive time. And most importantly show gratitude; for your modest season ticket price rises, for your new summer signings, for the fact that the grownups – however well qualified – remain in control.