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Transpired he was able to withstand losing against lower-league opposition. He weathered a decisive European final against a particularly poor Spurs sides in living memory. He withstood losing at home to West Ham and Wolves, finishing 15th, his rigid approach, undermining the team's best homegrown talent, a poor winning percentage, calling his team the worst in Manchester United history. Yet, there existed one adversary with whom Ruben Amorim was not permitted to engage. If you challenge Jason Wilcox, and you best not miss.

Unfortunately, like many a top-flight right-back during Blackburn Rovers' championship campaign, Amorim took on Jason Wilcox and seems to have failed. The most distracted of readers will notice the irony here: a manager who frequently berated his squad for losing individual battles crumbling in the face of the white heat and animal charisma of one of England's top division's most intimidating football executives.

And frankly, this whole painful saga appears to portray Jason Wilcox in a different perspective. Perhaps it might have been easy, based on his brief stint of experience with the Saints, to view him as merely a functionary in the United exoskeleton: a man who owed his position as much to his friendship with his former boss a fellow executive as any verifiable talent. How wrong we all were. In brilliantly outmanoeuvring United’s feted head coach, just as he bested the hapless a previous executive before him, Jason Wilcox has demonstrated to be among football's strategic masterminds: a strategic mind that the club's competitors are now rightly wary.

A Strategic Clash Over System and Ideology

For example, it was the director who being involved in the leadership that appointed the 3-4-3 fundamentalist the coach in the first place, played a key role in trying to persuade him to ditch his favored formation. Naturally, these pleas met a certain resistance. However, these judgements hold greater authority when issued by a man with the unimpeachable football pedigree of Jason Wilcox, a veteran of three England caps and a role in a championship team decades past.

Perhaps in time he might agree to outline his reasoning to the rest of us. Perhaps at some point questions may arise regarding why the coach is departing with full compensation, with no compensation reduction clause activated. But Jason Wilcox seldom speaks publicly, and with very good reason. The real thinkers of this sport – men like him – function on a plane exceeding our mundane comprehension. If he ever did speak, most likely we would perceive is a series of high-frequency signals and four-dimensional whirring. Wanting is not equivalent to being prepared to comprehend it.

An Ultimate Authority Behind Command

Naturally, by focusing our attention on Jason Wilcox we are obscuring the real power behind the modern United throne. The director is, after all, simply carrying out the commands of his line manager Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who in private has emphasized his desire for a four-man defense. According to reports, Ratcliffe has also proposed deploying the forward as a right wing-back. The owner is eager for the club to embrace analytics and metrics. Per reports, in an executive meeting early in his investment, he announced that United’s style of play “will be determined in this room”.

After all, Sir Jim is an expert in this technical footballing stuff, drawing from his previous experience in industry and yachting. Above all he is incredibly rich, and as we all know, the rich are superior: more insightful, sagacious, strategically brilliant, simply superior. Whom else would you trust to oversee a strategic plan of cost-cutting, the building of a modern arena that looks a lot like someone’s leftover knitting, the signing of Benjamin Sesko?

The New Soccer Order: Directors Over Managers

This is a trend that is becoming prevalent at the elite levels football. For decades, teams mistakenly delegated big footballing decisions to low-level employees like managers, scouts – players themselves. Perhaps it was once feasible for an up-and-coming, visionary coach with a philosophy and energy to join a club and implement their plan supported to fruition. But how many businesses have these guys established? How many large-scale layoffs have they managed? Better by far to invest the real power where it rightly belongs: the executive class, the casually dressed executives, the individuals with impressive LinkedIn profiles. It is wiser to determine the tactics in the boardroom and appoint a coach who will adapt their methods accordingly. If managers were once chefs, they are now more akin to delivery personnel: not responsible for the product, yet ultimately answerable if it arrives cold or fails of the box.

In the meantime, their job is increasingly less about defining the vision and more about marketing it: the front-facing representative of the operation, the visible figurehead of an organisation they can do little to influence. Enzo Maresca leads a team of literal children into Europe and secures domestic cups, 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.

The Neoliberal Football: Responsibility Only for the Few

And possibly on some microcosmic level this is simply neoliberalism at work: the elevation of a privileged elite who can never be wrong, whose choices remain sacrosanct, whose mistakes can always be resolved by sacking without explanation. Appoint the system coach and then dismiss him for using too much that system. Bring in the project manager and later discard him for requiring too long. And most importantly show gratitude; for your modest increases in ticket costs, for your new player acquisitions, for the fact that the grownups – regardless of their expertise – remain in control.