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Turns out Ruben Amorim endured a loss to Grimsby. Survive an important continental showpiece against one of the worst Spurs sides for many years. He withstood home defeats to West Ham and Wolves, finishing 15th, his rigid approach, laying waste to the team's most promising academy products, a poor winning percentage, calling his team the poorest in Manchester United history. Yet, there existed a single opponent with whom Ruben Amorim was not permitted to dance. If you challenge the sporting director, you had better succeed.

Unfortunately, like many a Premiership right-back during Blackburn Rovers' title-winning campaign, Amorim came at Jason Wilcox and seems to have missed. The most casual observer will notice the irony here: a coach who often railed his squad for losing individual battles crumbling when confronted by the white heat and formidable presence of one of England's top division's most feared football executives.

And frankly, this entire painful saga appears to portray the director in a different perspective. It may have been easy, based on his brief stint in a similar role with the Saints, 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 Omar Berrada rather than any verifiable talent. How mistaken we all were. By masterfully outmanoeuvring United’s feted manager, just as he bested the unfortunate a previous executive earlier, he has proved himself to be among the sport’s strategic masterminds: a tactical intellect of which United’s competitors will now be rightly wary.

The Strategic Conflict Over Formation and Ideology

For example, it was Jason Wilcox who being involved in the leadership that appointed the rigid 3-4-3 advocate the coach in the first place, was instrumental in attempting to convince Amorim to ditch his beloved formation. Unsurprisingly, these pleas met a certain resistance. However, these judgements carry more weight when issued from the mouth with the impeccable soccer background of Jason Wilcox, holder of three England caps and a role in a championship team decades past.

Maybe eventually he may be persuaded to explain his reasoning to the rest of us. Perhaps at some point questions may arise why Amorim is walking away with full compensation, without any compensation reduction clause activated. The director speaks rarely publicly, and with very good reason. The true intellectuals of this sport – men like him – simply operate on a plane 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 the same as being ready to receive.

The Ultimate Authority In Command

But of course, in training our focus on Jason Wilcox we overlook the true genius behind the modern United throne. The director is, after all, merely executing the commands of his ultimate line manager Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who in private has emphasized his desire for a back four. According to reports, the owner has also suggested playing Bryan Mbeumo as a right wing-back. The owner is eager for United to embrace analytics and analytics. According to ESPN, during a leadership summit early in his investment, he announced that the team's approach to football “shall be decided in this room”.

After all, Ratcliffe is an expert in this technical footballing stuff, drawing from his background in industry and yachting. Above all he remains incredibly rich, and as we all know, the wealthy are the best of us: more perceptive, sagacious, more tactically astute, fundamentally better. Who else would you trust to oversee a strategic plan of cost-cutting, the building of a modern arena that appears a lot like someone’s leftover knitting, the acquisition of a new striker?

A New Football Hierarchy: Executives Above Managers

This is a trend we are increasingly seeing in top-tier of the game. For decades, clubs foolishly entrusted big footballing decisions to low-level employees such as coaches, scouts – players themselves. Maybe previously feasible for a young, innovative manager with a philosophy and energy to go into an organization and implement their plan supported to fruition. But how many companies have these guys established? How many mass redundancies have they overseen? Better by far to invest the real power where it rightly belongs: the leadership tier, the casually dressed executives, the guys with impressive professional resumes. Better by far to decide the tactics by the directors and appoint a coach who will adapt their offering accordingly. If coaches were formerly chefs, they have become more akin to Deliveroo drivers: not responsible for the food, but still finally accountable should it be delivered cold or fails of the box.

Nowadays, their job has become less about defining the vision and more about selling it: the front-facing representative on the front desk, the public face of an organisation they have minimal power to change. A coach at Chelsea takes a squad of literal children into the Champions League and secures domestic cups, and essentially gets sacked for talking. Wilfried Nancy sees his reputation ruined whereas the people who hired him live to blunder indefinitely.

A Neoliberal Football: Accountability for the Coaches

And perhaps on some microcosmic level this represents corporate governance at work: the elevation of a gilded elite who can never be wrong, whose choices are always untouchable, whose mistakes can always be resolved by sacking without explanation. Appoint the 3-4-3 coach only to dismiss them for using excessively that system. Hire the process guy and later discard them for requiring excessive time. And above all show gratitude; for the incremental increases in ticket costs, for your new player acquisitions, for the fact that the adults – however well qualified – remain in control.