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Itbecame clear the manager could survive losing against Grimsby. Survive losing a crucial continental showpiece versus a particularly poor Spurs sides for many years. He withstood losing at home against West Ham and Wolves, finishing 15th, his rigid approach, undermining the team's best academy products, the 32% win rate, calling the squad the poorest the club has ever seen. Yet, there existed a single opponent with whom Ruben Amorim was not permitted to dance. If you challenge Jason Wilcox, you had better succeed.

Regrettably, like many a Premiership right-back in Blackburn’s championship campaign, Amorim took on Jason Wilcox and appears to have failed. The most distracted of readers can see the paradoxical situation: a coach who frequently berated at his players for failing in individual battles crumbling when confronted by the intense pressure and animal charisma of one of the Premier League’s most intimidating football executives.

And frankly, this entire painful saga appears to portray Jason Wilcox in a whole new light. It may have been easy, given his brief stint in a similar role at Southampton, to view Jason Wilcox as merely a drudge in the United exoskeleton: a man whose appointment was due as much to his close relationship with his former boss Omar Berrada rather than any demonstrable skill. How wrong everyone was. In brilliantly outsmarting the club's celebrated head coach, as he outmanoeuvred the hapless a previous executive before him, Jason Wilcox has proved himself as one of the sport’s strategic masterminds: a tactical intellect of which the club's mid-table rivals will now be rightly wary.

A Strategic Conflict Regarding Formation & Philosophy

To illustrate, it was the director who being involved in the hierarchy that appointed the rigid 3-4-3 advocate the coach originally, played a key role in trying to persuade Amorim to ditch his beloved 3-4-3. Naturally, these entreaties met a certain resistance. However, such directives hold greater authority when issued from the mouth with the unimpeachable soccer background he possesses, a veteran of international appearances and a role in a championship team decades past.

Maybe eventually he may be persuaded to outline his thought processes 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 in place. But Jason Wilcox seldom speaks in public, for excellent reasons. The real thinkers in football – men like Jason Wilcox – function on a plane beyond our own prosaic understanding. Were he to speak, most likely all we would hear would be high-frequency signals and complex calculations. Wanting is not quite the same as being prepared to receive.

The Ultimate Authority In Command

Naturally, by focusing our attention on the sporting director we are obscuring the real power behind the modern United throne. Jason Wilcox is, in reality, merely executing the directives of his line manager Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who privately has made very clear his desire for a four-man defense. According to reports, Ratcliffe has also suggested playing Bryan Mbeumo in a wing-back role. The owner is eager for United to embrace data science and analytics. Per reports, in an executive meeting soon after his investment, he declared that the team's approach to football “shall be determined by this group”.

Ultimately, Sir Jim is an expert in this technical football matters, drawing from his previous experience in industry and sailing. Above all he is immensely wealthy, and it is known, the rich are superior: more insightful, sagacious, more tactically astute, simply better. Who else could one trust to manage a strategic plan of austerity, the building of a new stadium that looks similar to someone’s leftover knitting, the signing of a new striker?

A New Soccer Order: Directors Over Managers

This represents a shift that is becoming prevalent at the elite levels of the game. Historically, teams mistakenly entrusted big footballing decisions to low-level employees like managers, scouts – even footballers. Maybe previously feasible for an up-and-coming, innovative manager with a philosophy and energy to join an organization and implement their plan through to completion. Yet how many businesses have such individuals set up? What number of large-scale layoffs have they overseen? Far preferable to place the real power where it belongs: the leadership tier, the casually dressed executives, the individuals with impressive LinkedIn profiles. Better by far to decide the strategy in the boardroom and hire a coach who will adapt their offering to suit. If coaches were once chefs, they are now more akin to delivery personnel: not really creating the food, but still ultimately answerable if it arrives poorly or leaks out to meet standards.

Nowadays, a coach's role is increasingly less about crafting the philosophy and more about selling it: the front-facing representative of the operation, the visible figurehead for a club they can do little to influence. Enzo Maresca takes a squad of literal children into the Champions League and wins two medium-sized trophies, and essentially gets sacked for speaking out. A manager at Celtic finds his reputation ruined while the people who hired him live to blunder another day.

The Neoliberal Game: Accountability Only for the Coaches

And possibly on some microcosmic level this represents corporate governance at work: the rise of a privileged overclass who can never be wrong, whose decisions are always sacrosanct, whose mistakes can always be sacked away without justification. Appoint the 3-4-3 coach and then dismiss him for using excessively 3-4-3. Bring in the project manager and later bin him for taking too long. And most importantly be grateful; for the incremental increases in ticket costs, for your new player acquisitions, for the fact that the grownups – however well qualified – are in charge.