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Turns out he was able to withstand defeat by lower-league opposition. Survive an important European final versus one of the worst Tottenham teams for many years. He withstood losing at home to domestic rivals, a lowly league position, the tactical inflexibility, undermining the team's most promising academy products, the 32% win rate, calling the squad the worst the club has ever seen. But there was one adversary with whom Ruben Amorim was not permitted to dance. If you challenge the sporting director, and you best not miss.

Unfortunately, like many a top-flight right-back in Blackburn’s championship 1994-95 season, the coach took on the executive and appears to have missed. The most distracted of readers can see the paradoxical situation: a coach who frequently berated at his players for losing individual battles succumbing when confronted by the white heat and animal charisma of a England's top division's most intimidating football executives.

And frankly, this entire painful saga appears to portray the director in a different perspective. Perhaps it might have been tempting, given his nine months in a similar role at Southampton, to view Jason Wilcox as little more than a functionary in the United exoskeleton: an individual whose appointment was due as much to his friendship with his former boss Omar Berrada as any demonstrable skill. How mistaken we all were. By masterfully outmanoeuvring the club's celebrated manager, as he outmanoeuvred the unfortunate Dan Ashworth before him, Jason Wilcox has proved himself to be among football's true generals: a tactical intellect that the club's mid-table rivals will now be justifiably concerned.

The Strategic Clash Over Formation & Ideology

To illustrate, this was Jason Wilcox who having been part of the leadership that appointed the rigid 3-4-3 advocate Amorim originally, played a key role in trying to persuade Amorim to abandon his favored 3-4-3. Naturally, these entreaties faced pushback. However, such directives carry more weight when issued from the mouth of a man the impeccable football pedigree of Jason Wilcox, holder of international appearances and a role in a championship team decades past.

Maybe eventually Jason Wilcox might agree to explain his thought processes to the rest of us. Perhaps at some point questions may arise why Amorim is walking away with full compensation, with no compensation reduction clause in place. The director speaks rarely in public, for excellent reasons. The real thinkers of this sport – men like Jason Wilcox – function on a plane beyond our own prosaic understanding. Were he to speak, most likely we would perceive would be high-frequency signals and complex calculations. Desiring an explanation is not the same as being prepared to receive.

The Ultimate Power In the Throne

But of course, in training our focus on the sporting director we are obscuring the true genius behind the modern United throne. The director is, in reality, merely executing the directives of his superior the billionaire owner, who privately has made very clear his desire for a four-man defense. According to reports, the owner has also proposed deploying the forward in a wing-back role. The owner is eager for the club to embrace data science and analytics. Per reports, during a leadership summit soon after his investment, he declared that the team's approach to football “shall be decided in this room”.

After all, Sir Jim is a specialist in this technical football matters, drawing from his background in petrochemicals and yachting. Most importantly he is incredibly rich, and it is known, the rich are superior: more perceptive, sagacious, strategically brilliant, fundamentally better. Who else would you trust to oversee an enlightened programme of austerity, the construction of a new stadium that looks a lot like someone’s leftover knitting, the signing of Benjamin Sesko?

A New Soccer Order: Directors Over Coaches

This is a trend we are increasingly seeing in top-tier of the game. Historically, teams mistakenly delegated big footballing decisions to subordinate staff such as coaches, talent spotters – even footballers. Maybe previously feasible for a young, innovative manager with a philosophy and energy 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? Far preferable to invest genuine authority where it rightly belongs: the leadership tier, the open-necked shirt brigade, the guys with impressive professional resumes. It is wiser to determine the strategy in the boardroom and hire a coach who will adapt their offering to suit. If coaches were once chefs, they have become more akin to delivery personnel: not really responsible for the food, yet ultimately answerable if it arrives poorly or fails to meet standards.

In the meantime, their job is increasingly less about defining the vision and more about selling it: the receptionist on the front desk, the public face of an organisation they have minimal power to change. A coach at Chelsea takes a squad of very young players into Europe and secures domestic cups, and essentially gets sacked for talking. Wilfried Nancy finds his reputation ruined while those individuals who hired him live to blunder indefinitely.

A Neoliberal Game: Responsibility Only for the Few

And possibly in a small way this represents neoliberalism in action: the elevation of a privileged overclass who can never be wrong, whose decisions are always sacrosanct, whose errors can invariably be sacked away without justification. Appoint the system coach only to dismiss them for playing too much 3-4-3. Bring in the project manager and later bin him for taking excessive time. And above all be grateful; for your modest increases in ticket costs, for the latest player acquisitions, for the fact that the adults – regardless of their expertise – are in charge.