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Tbecame clear Ruben Amorim was able to withstand losing against lower-league opposition. Survive a decisive continental showpiece against one of the worst Spurs sides for many years. He withstood losing at home to West Ham and Wolves, finishing 15th, the tactical inflexibility, squandering some of the club’s best homegrown talent, a poor winning percentage, labeling his team the worst in Manchester United history. But there was one adversary with whom the Portuguese coach would not be allowed to engage. If you challenge the sporting director, you had better succeed.

Regrettably, like many a Premiership defender in Blackburn’s championship 1994-95 season, the coach took on Jason Wilcox and seems to have missed. The most distracted of readers can see the irony here: a manager who frequently berated his squad for failing in individual battles crumbling in the face of the intense pressure and formidable presence of a England's top division's most intimidating sporting directors.

And frankly, this whole painful saga appears to portray Jason Wilcox in a different perspective. It may have been easy, given his nine months in a similar role with the Saints, to regard Jason Wilcox as little more than a drudge in the United exoskeleton: a man who owed his position largely to his close relationship with ex-colleague Omar Berrada as any demonstrable skill. How mistaken everyone was. In brilliantly outsmarting United’s feted head coach, as he outmanoeuvred the unfortunate a previous executive earlier, Jason Wilcox has proved himself to be among football's true generals: a strategic mind of which the club's mid-table rivals will now be rightly wary.

The Strategic Clash Regarding System & Ideology

To illustrate, this was the director , after having been part of the leadership that hired the 3-4-3 fundamentalist the coach originally, played a key role in attempting to convince him to abandon his beloved 3-4-3. Unsurprisingly, these entreaties faced pushback. However, such directives hold greater authority when issued by a man of a man the impeccable football pedigree he possesses, holder of three England caps and a role in a championship team decades past.

Maybe eventually he might agree to explain his reasoning publicly. Perhaps at some point questions may arise why Amorim is walking away with full compensation, without any compensation reduction clause in place. But Jason Wilcox speaks rarely in public, for excellent reasons. The real thinkers of this sport – individuals such as Jason Wilcox – function at a level exceeding our prosaic understanding. If he ever did speak, probably all we would hear would be ultrasonic blips and four-dimensional whirring. Desiring an explanation is not equivalent to being prepared to comprehend it.

The Ultimate Authority In Command

Naturally, by focusing our attention on the sporting director we are obscuring the true genius behind the club's current leadership. Jason Wilcox is, after all, simply carrying out the commands 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 adopt analytics and metrics. Per reports, in an executive meeting soon after his minority ownership, he declared that the team's approach of play “shall be decided in this room”.

After all, Sir Jim is a specialist in these intricate football matters, drawing from his background in petrochemicals and sailing. Most importantly he is incredibly rich, and as we all know, the rich are the best of us: more insightful, more wise, strategically brilliant, simply better. Who else would you trust to manage a strategic plan of austerity, the building of a new stadium that looks a lot like an abstract design, the signing of Benjamin Sesko?

The New Football Order: Executives Above Coaches

This represents a shift that is becoming prevalent in top-tier of the game. For decades, teams mistakenly entrusted big footballing decisions to low-level employees such as coaches, talent spotters – players themselves. Maybe previously feasible for a young, innovative manager with a philosophy and drive to go into an organization and implement their plan through to completion. Yet how many companies have these guys set up? How many mass redundancies have they overseen? Better by far to invest the real power where it rightly belongs: the leadership tier, 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 a coach who can tailor their offering to suit. If managers were once chefs, they have become more akin to delivery personnel: not creating the food, but still finally accountable should it be delivered cold or fails to meet standards.

In the meantime, their job has become not about defining the vision and more about selling it: the front-facing representative of the operation, the visible figurehead for a club they have minimal power to influence. Enzo Maresca leads a team of literal children into Europe and secures domestic cups, and essentially is dismissed for speaking out. Wilfried Nancy sees his reputation ruined whereas the people who hired him continue to make errors indefinitely.

The Neoliberal Football: Accountability for the Coaches

And perhaps in a small way this is simply neoliberalism at work: the elevation of a gilded elite who are infallible, whose decisions are always sacrosanct, whose errors can invariably be sacked away without explanation. Hire the 3-4-3 coach and then dismiss them for playing too much that system. Hire the project manager and later bin them for requiring too long. And above all be grateful; for your modest increases in ticket costs, for your new summer signings, for the fact that the grownups – however well qualified – are in charge.