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Itranspired the manager could survive a loss to Grimsby. Survive an important European final versus a particularly poor Tottenham teams in living memory. He could survive home defeats against domestic rivals, a lowly league position, the tactical inflexibility, undermining the team's best homegrown talent, a poor winning percentage, calling the squad the poorest in Manchester United history. Yet, there existed one adversary with whom Ruben Amorim was not permitted to tango. If you challenge the sporting director, you had better succeed.

Unfortunately, similar to numerous Premiership right-back during Blackburn Rovers' championship campaign, Amorim came at Jason Wilcox and appears to have failed. The most casual observer can see the paradoxical situation: a coach who frequently berated 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.

And frankly, this whole painful saga appears to portray the director in a whole new light. Perhaps it might have been easy, given his brief stint in a similar role at Southampton, to view him as little more than a functionary within the club's structure: a man whose appointment was due as much to his friendship with his former boss a fellow executive as any demonstrable skill. How mistaken we all were. By masterfully outsmarting the club's celebrated manager, as he outmanoeuvred the unfortunate a previous executive earlier, he has proved himself to be among the sport’s strategic masterminds: a strategic mind of which the club's mid-table rivals will now be justifiably concerned.

The Strategic Clash Over System & Ideology

To illustrate, it was Jason Wilcox who having been part of the hierarchy that hired the rigid 3-4-3 advocate the coach originally, was instrumental in attempting to convince him to abandon his favored formation. Unsurprisingly, these entreaties met a certain resistance. However, these judgements carry more weight when delivered from the mouth of a man the impeccable soccer background of Jason Wilcox, a veteran of international appearances and a role in a championship team from 31 years ago.

Maybe eventually Jason Wilcox might agree to outline his thought processes publicly. Maybe one day he might be asked regarding why the coach is walking away with a full payout, with no penalty clause activated. The director speaks rarely in public, for excellent reasons. The true intellectuals in football – men like Jason Wilcox – simply operate at a level beyond our own mundane comprehension. If he ever did speak, probably we would perceive is a series of ultrasonic blips and four-dimensional whirring. Desiring an explanation is not equivalent to being prepared to comprehend it.

An Supreme Power Behind the Throne

Naturally, by focusing our attention on Jason Wilcox we are obscuring the true genius behind the modern United throne. The director is, after all, simply carrying out the directives of his ultimate superior the billionaire owner, who in private has made very clear his preference for a back four. It is reported, Ratcliffe has also suggested playing Bryan Mbeumo as a right wing-back. The owner is eager for United to embrace analytics and analytics. Per reports, during a leadership summit soon after his minority ownership, he declared that United’s style to football “shall be determined by this group”.

Ultimately, Sir Jim is a specialist in these intricate football matters, drawing from his previous experience in industry and sailing. Above all he remains immensely wealthy, and it is known, the wealthy are superior: more insightful, sagacious, more tactically astute, fundamentally superior. Who else would you trust to manage a strategic plan of cost-cutting, the construction of a modern arena that appears similar to an abstract design, the signing of a new striker?

A New Football Hierarchy: Directors Above Coaches

This is a trend that is becoming prevalent in top-tier football. Historically, clubs foolishly delegated major sporting choices to subordinate staff like managers, talent spotters – even footballers. Maybe previously feasible for a young, innovative manager with a philosophy and energy to go into a club and implement their plan supported to fruition. But how many businesses have these guys established? What number of 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 guys with impressive LinkedIn profiles. It is wiser to decide the strategy by the directors and hire someone who can tailor their offering accordingly. If coaches were once chefs, they are now more akin to delivery personnel: not really creating the food, yet ultimately answerable if it arrives cold or leaks out to meet standards.

Nowadays, a coach's role has become not about crafting the philosophy and more about marketing it: the front-facing representative of the operation, the visible figurehead for a club they can do little to influence. A coach at Chelsea takes a squad of literal children into the Champions League and secures two medium-sized trophies, and effectively is dismissed for talking. A manager at Celtic finds his standing damaged whereas those individuals who hired him live to blunder indefinitely.

A Neoliberal Football: Responsibility Only for the Few

And possibly in a small way this represents neoliberalism at work: the elevation of a gilded elite who are infallible, whose decisions are always untouchable, whose mistakes can always be resolved by sacking without justification. Hire the system coach and then dismiss him for playing too much 3-4-3. Hire the process guy and later bin them for taking too long. And above all be grateful; for the incremental increases in ticket costs, for your new player acquisitions, for the reality that the grownups – however well qualified – remain in control.