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Transpired Ruben Amorim could survive losing against lower-league opposition. He weathered a decisive continental showpiece versus one of the worst Tottenham teams for many years. He withstood losing at home to domestic rivals, finishing 15th, an unwavering system, squandering the team's most promising homegrown talent, the 32% win rate, labeling his team the worst in Manchester United history. But there was a single opponent with whom Ruben Amorim would not be allowed to engage. If you challenge Jason Wilcox, and you best not miss.

Unfortunately, similar to numerous top-flight defender during Blackburn Rovers' championship campaign, Amorim took on the executive and seems to have failed. Even the most distracted of readers can see the irony here: a coach who frequently berated his squad for losing individual battles succumbing in the face of the white heat and animal charisma of a England's top division's most intimidating sporting directors.

In truth, this entire bruising episode appears to portray the director in a different perspective. It may have been easy, given his nine months of experience with the Saints, to regard him as merely a functionary in the United exoskeleton: an individual who owed his position as much to his close relationship with his former boss a fellow executive rather than any verifiable talent. How wrong we all were. By masterfully outsmarting United’s feted head coach, just as he bested the unfortunate Dan Ashworth earlier, Jason Wilcox has proved himself as one of football's strategic masterminds: a tactical intellect that the club's competitors are now justifiably concerned.

The Strategic Conflict Over System and Ideology

To illustrate, this was Jason Wilcox who having been part of the hierarchy that hired the rigid 3-4-3 advocate Amorim in the first place, played a key role in trying to persuade Amorim to ditch his beloved formation. Naturally, these pleas met a certain resistance. However, these judgements carry more weight when delivered by a man with the unimpeachable soccer background of Jason Wilcox, holder of international appearances and a contributor to a championship team decades past.

Maybe eventually he may be persuaded to explain his thought processes to the rest of us. Perhaps at some point he might be asked regarding why the coach is departing with full compensation, without any compensation reduction clause in place. But Jason Wilcox speaks rarely in public, for excellent reasons. The true intellectuals of this sport – men like Jason Wilcox – function on a plane exceeding our prosaic understanding. If he ever did speak, most likely all we would hear would be ultrasonic blips and complex calculations. Wanting is not the same as being ready to comprehend it.

An Ultimate Authority In the Throne

Naturally, by focusing our attention on Jason Wilcox we are obscuring the true genius behind the club's current leadership. The director is, after all, merely executing the directives of his ultimate line manager the billionaire owner, who privately has made very clear his desire for a four-man defense. According to reports, Ratcliffe has also proposed playing Bryan Mbeumo in a wing-back role. The owner is eager for the club to embrace analytics and analytics. According to ESPN, during a leadership summit soon after his investment, he declared that United’s style of play “shall be decided in this room”.

Ultimately, Sir Jim is an expert in these intricate football matters, leveraging his background in petrochemicals and yachting. Above all he is incredibly rich, and as we all know, the rich are the best of us: more perceptive, sagacious, strategically brilliant, fundamentally better. Whom else would you trust to oversee a strategic plan of austerity, the building of a modern arena that appears similar to someone’s leftover knitting, the signing of a new striker?

A Modern Football Hierarchy: Directors Over Managers

This is a trend we are increasingly seeing in top-tier of the game. Historically, clubs foolishly delegated big footballing decisions to subordinate staff such as coaches, scouts – players themselves. Maybe previously feasible for a young, innovative manager with a philosophy and drive to join a club and implement their plan supported to fruition. Yet how many companies have such individuals established? How many mass redundancies have they managed? Better by far to invest genuine authority where it rightly belongs: the executive class, the casually dressed executives, the individuals with the jaw-dropping LinkedIn profiles. Better by far to determine the tactics by the directors and appoint someone who can tailor their offering to suit. If managers were once chefs, they are now more like delivery personnel: not really creating the food, but still finally accountable if it arrives cold or leaks out to meet standards.

In the meantime, their job is increasingly not about defining the vision and more about selling it: the receptionist of the operation, the public face of an organisation they have minimal power to influence. Enzo Maresca takes a squad of very young players into the Champions League and wins domestic cups, and essentially gets sacked for talking. A manager at Celtic finds his reputation ruined whereas those individuals who hired him continue to make errors another day.

The Modern Corporate Football: Responsibility Only for the Coaches

And possibly on some microcosmic level this represents corporate governance in action: the elevation of a gilded overclass who can never be wrong, whose choices remain untouchable, whose mistakes can invariably be resolved by sacking without explanation. Appoint the 3-4-3 coach and then dismiss them for playing too much 3-4-3. Bring in the process guy and then bin them for requiring excessive time. And above all be grateful; for your modest increases in ticket costs, for your new player acquisitions, for the fact that the grownups – however well qualified – remain in control.