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Tbecame clear he was able to withstand losing against Grimsby. Survive an important European final against a particularly poor Tottenham teams in living memory. He withstood losing at home against West Ham and Wolves, a lowly league position, an unwavering system, squandering some of the club’s best academy products, the 32% win rate, labeling his team the worst in Manchester United history. But there was a single opponent with whom Ruben Amorim would not be allowed to dance. If you challenge Jason Wilcox, and you best not miss.

Regrettably, similar to numerous top-flight defender in Blackburn’s title-winning 1994-95 season, the coach took on the executive and seems to have missed. Even the most distracted of readers will notice the irony here: a manager who often railed 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 feared football executives.

In truth, this entire bruising episode appears to portray the director in a whole new light. Perhaps it might have been easy, given his brief stint of experience with the Saints, to view him as merely a drudge in the United exoskeleton: a man whose appointment was due as much to his friendship with ex-colleague a fellow executive rather than any demonstrable skill. How wrong everyone was. By masterfully outmanoeuvring the club's celebrated head coach, just as he bested the unfortunate a previous executive earlier, he has demonstrated to be among the sport’s true generals: a tactical intellect of which United’s competitors will now be rightly wary.

The Strategic Conflict Over Formation and Ideology

To illustrate, this was the director who having been part of the leadership that appointed the rigid 3-4-3 advocate Amorim originally, played a key role in attempting to convince him to ditch his favored formation. Naturally, these entreaties faced pushback. However, such directives hold greater authority when delivered from the mouth of a man the unimpeachable soccer background of Jason Wilcox, holder of three England caps and a role in a title-winning side decades past.

Perhaps in time he may be persuaded to explain his thought processes to the rest of us. Perhaps at some point he might be asked why Amorim is departing with full compensation, without any compensation reduction clause activated. The director speaks rarely in public, and with very good reason. The real thinkers of this sport – men like him – function on a plane beyond our own prosaic understanding. Were he to speak, probably all we would hear is a series of high-frequency signals and complex calculations. Desiring an explanation is not quite the same as being ready to comprehend it.

The Supreme Authority In Command

Naturally, in training our focus on Jason Wilcox we overlook the real power behind the modern United throne. The director is, after all, merely executing the commands of his ultimate superior Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who privately has made very clear his preference for a four-man defense. It is reported, Ratcliffe has also suggested deploying the forward as a right wing-back. Ratcliffe is keen for United to embrace analytics and analytics. According to ESPN, during a leadership summit early in his minority ownership, he declared that United’s style of play “will be decided by this group”.

After all, Sir Jim is an expert in these intricate football matters, leveraging his background in petrochemicals and sailing. Above all he is incredibly rich, and it is known, the rich are superior: more perceptive, sagacious, more tactically astute, simply better. Whom else would you trust to manage an enlightened programme of cost-cutting, the construction of a modern arena that looks a lot like an abstract design, the signing of a new striker?

The New Football Hierarchy: Executives Above Coaches

This is a trend we are increasingly seeing in top-tier football. Historically, clubs foolishly delegated major sporting choices to low-level employees such as coaches, talent spotters – even footballers. Perhaps it was once feasible for an up-and-coming, visionary coach with ideas and drive to join an organization and implement their plan supported to fruition. Yet how many companies have such individuals established? How many large-scale layoffs have they overseen? Better by far to invest genuine authority where it rightly belongs: the leadership tier, the casually dressed executives, the individuals with impressive professional resumes. It is wiser to decide the strategy in the boardroom and hire someone who can tailor their methods to suit. If coaches were once chefs, they have become more akin to Deliveroo drivers: not really creating the product, but still finally accountable should it be delivered poorly or leaks out of the box.

Nowadays, a coach's role has become not 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. A coach at Chelsea leads a team of literal children into Europe and wins two medium-sized trophies, and effectively gets sacked for talking. A manager at Celtic finds his reputation ruined while the people who appointed him live to blunder another day.

The Neoliberal Football: Accountability Only for the Few

And possibly in a small way this is simply neoliberalism in action: the rise of a privileged overclass who can never be wrong, whose decisions remain sacrosanct, whose errors can invariably be sacked away without justification. Hire the system coach only to dismiss him for using excessively that system. Hire the project manager and then bin them for taking too long. And most importantly show gratitude; for your modest season ticket price rises, for your new summer signings, for the fact that the adults – however well qualified – remain in control.