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Itranspired the manager could survive a loss to lower-league opposition. He weathered a decisive European final versus one of the worst Spurs sides for many years. He could survive home defeats against West Ham and Wolves, a lowly league position, the tactical inflexibility, squandering the team's best homegrown talent, a poor winning percentage, calling his team the poorest in Manchester United history. Yet, there existed a single opponent against whom Ruben Amorim was not permitted to engage. You come at the sporting director, and you best not miss.

Regrettably, like many a top-flight right-back during Blackburn Rovers' championship 1994-95 season, Amorim came at the executive and appears to have missed. Even the most distracted of readers can see the paradoxical situation: a manager who often railed at his players for losing individual battles crumbling in the face of the intense pressure and formidable presence of one of England's top division's most feared sporting directors.

In truth, this whole painful saga appears to portray Jason Wilcox in a whole new light. It may have been tempting, given his nine months of experience at Southampton, to view Jason Wilcox as merely a functionary in the United exoskeleton: an individual who owed his position as much to his friendship with ex-colleague a fellow executive rather than any demonstrable skill. How wrong we all were. In brilliantly outsmarting United’s feted head coach, as he outmanoeuvred the unfortunate a previous executive earlier, he has demonstrated to be among football's true generals: a strategic mind of which United’s mid-table rivals will now be justifiably concerned.

A Tactical Clash Regarding System & Philosophy

To illustrate, this was Jason Wilcox who being involved in the hierarchy that appointed the 3-4-3 fundamentalist the coach in the first place, was instrumental in attempting to convince Amorim to ditch his beloved formation. Naturally, these pleas met a certain resistance. But perhaps these judgements carry more weight when delivered from the mouth with the impeccable soccer background he possesses, holder of three England caps and a contributor to a title-winning side decades past.

Maybe eventually he might agree to explain his thought processes to the rest of us. Maybe one day he might be asked why Amorim is departing with a full payout, with no penalty clause activated. The director seldom speaks publicly, for excellent reasons. The real thinkers in football – men like Jason Wilcox – function at a level beyond our own mundane comprehension. If he ever did speak, probably all we would hear would be high-frequency signals and complex calculations. Wanting is not quite equivalent to being ready to comprehend it.

An Supreme Power Behind the Throne

Naturally, by focusing our attention on the sporting director we are obscuring the real power behind the club's current leadership. The director is, in reality, simply carrying out the directives of his line manager Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who privately has made very clear his preference for a back four. According to reports, Ratcliffe has also proposed deploying the forward in a wing-back role. Ratcliffe is keen for United to adopt data science and analytics. According to ESPN, in an executive meeting soon after his minority ownership, he declared that United’s style of play “shall be decided in this room”.

After all, Sir Jim is a specialist in this technical football matters, leveraging his previous experience in industry and yachting. Most importantly he is immensely wealthy, and it is known, the rich are superior: more perceptive, sagacious, more tactically astute, fundamentally better. Whom else would you trust to oversee an enlightened programme of austerity, the building of a new stadium that appears similar to someone’s leftover knitting, the signing of Benjamin Sesko?

A New Football Hierarchy: Executives Above Coaches

This represents a shift that is becoming prevalent in top-tier of the game. For decades, teams mistakenly delegated big footballing decisions to subordinate staff like managers, talent spotters – even footballers. Perhaps it was once feasible for an up-and-coming, visionary coach with a philosophy and energy to join a club and see their vision through to completion. But how many businesses have these guys set up? What number of mass redundancies have they overseen? Better by far to place the real power where it belongs: the executive class, the open-necked shirt brigade, the individuals with the jaw-dropping professional resumes. Better by far to determine the tactics in the boardroom and hire a coach who will adapt their methods accordingly. If coaches were once chefs, they are now more akin to Deliveroo drivers: not really creating the product, yet finally accountable if it arrives cold or leaks out of the box.

Nowadays, their job has become not about defining the vision and more about selling it: the receptionist on the front desk, the public face for a club they can do little to change. Enzo Maresca leads a team of literal children into Europe and wins two medium-sized trophies, 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: Accountability for the Coaches

And possibly on some microcosmic level this is simply corporate governance at work: the rise of a privileged elite who can never be wrong, whose decisions remain sacrosanct, whose mistakes can always be resolved by sacking without justification. Hire the 3-4-3 coach and then fire them for using too much that system. Hire the process guy and then discard him for taking excessive time. And above all be grateful; for the incremental increases in ticket costs, for your new player acquisitions, for the reality that the adults – regardless of their expertise – are in charge.