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Transpired he was able to withstand a loss to lower-league opposition. Survive an important continental showpiece versus one of the worst Spurs sides for many years. He withstood home defeats to domestic rivals, finishing 15th, the tactical inflexibility, squandering the team's best homegrown talent, the 32% win rate, calling the squad the worst the club has ever seen. But there was a single opponent with whom Ruben Amorim was not permitted to dance. If you challenge the sporting director, and you best not miss.

Regrettably, like many a top-flight defender in Blackburn’s championship campaign, Amorim took on Jason Wilcox and appears to have failed. Even the most distracted of readers can see the paradoxical situation: a coach who often railed his squad for failing in individual battles crumbling in the face of the intense pressure and animal charisma of a the Premier League’s most intimidating sporting directors.

And frankly, this entire bruising episode seems to paint Jason Wilcox in a whole new light. Perhaps it might have been easy, given his nine months of experience at Southampton, to view him as little more than a drudge in the United exoskeleton: an individual who owed his position largely to his close relationship with ex-colleague Omar Berrada rather than any verifiable talent. How mistaken we all were. In brilliantly outmanoeuvring the club's celebrated manager, as he outmanoeuvred the hapless Dan Ashworth earlier, he has demonstrated to be among football's strategic masterminds: a tactical intellect that the club's competitors will now be rightly wary.

The Tactical Conflict Regarding System and Philosophy

To illustrate, this was the director , after having been part of the hierarchy that hired the rigid 3-4-3 advocate the coach in the first place, was instrumental in trying to persuade Amorim to ditch his beloved 3-4-3. Unsurprisingly, these entreaties were resisted. But perhaps such directives hold greater authority when issued by a man of a man the impeccable soccer background of Jason Wilcox, a veteran of three England caps and a contributor to a championship team decades past.

Perhaps in time Jason Wilcox might agree to explain his reasoning 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 activated. The director speaks rarely in public, and with very good reason. The real thinkers in football – men like Jason Wilcox – simply operate on a plane exceeding our mundane comprehension. Were he to speak, most likely we would perceive is a series of ultrasonic blips and four-dimensional whirring. Wanting is not quite equivalent to being ready to receive.

An Ultimate Power Behind Command

Naturally, by focusing our attention on the sporting director we are obscuring the true genius behind the club's current leadership. Jason Wilcox is, after all, merely executing the commands of his superior the billionaire owner, who privately has emphasized his preference for a back four. It is reported, the owner has also proposed playing Bryan Mbeumo in a wing-back role. The owner is eager for United to adopt data science and metrics. According to ESPN, during a leadership summit soon after his minority ownership, he declared that United’s style to football “will be decided by this group”.

After all, Ratcliffe is a specialist in this technical football matters, leveraging his background in petrochemicals and yachting. Most importantly he remains incredibly rich, and as we all know, the rich are the best of us: more perceptive, more wise, strategically brilliant, fundamentally superior. Who else could one trust to manage an enlightened programme of austerity, the construction of a modern arena that appears a lot like an abstract design, the signing of Benjamin Sesko?

A Modern Football Hierarchy: Executives Above Coaches

This represents a shift we are increasingly seeing in top-tier football. For decades, teams mistakenly delegated major sporting choices to subordinate staff such as coaches, talent spotters – players themselves. Perhaps it was once possible for an up-and-coming, visionary coach with a philosophy and energy to join a club and see their vision through to completion. Yet how many companies have these guys set up? How many mass redundancies have they managed? Far preferable to place genuine authority where it belongs: the leadership tier, the casually dressed executives, the individuals with the jaw-dropping LinkedIn profiles. It is wiser to decide the strategy in the boardroom and hire a coach who will adapt their offering to suit. If coaches were formerly chefs, they are now more like delivery personnel: not really creating the food, yet finally accountable should it be delivered poorly or fails to meet standards.

Nowadays, their job is increasingly less about defining the vision and more about marketing it: the front-facing representative on the front desk, the visible figurehead of an organisation they have minimal power to influence. A coach at Chelsea leads a team of literal children into the Champions League and secures two medium-sized trophies, and essentially is dismissed for talking. A manager at Celtic sees his standing damaged while the people who appointed him continue to make errors indefinitely.

The Neoliberal Football: Accountability Only for the Coaches

And possibly in a small way this is simply neoliberalism at work: the rise of a privileged elite who can never be wrong, whose choices are always sacrosanct, whose errors can always be sacked away without justification. Appoint the 3-4-3 coach only to fire him for playing too much 3-4-3. Bring in the process guy and later bin them for requiring too long. And most importantly show gratitude; for the incremental increases in ticket costs, for the latest summer signings, for the reality that the grownups – however well qualified – remain in control.