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Tbecame clear Ruben Amorim could survive a loss to Grimsby. Survive a decisive European final against one of the worst Spurs sides for many years. He withstood home defeats to West Ham and Wolves, finishing 15th, the tactical inflexibility, laying waste to some of the club’s best homegrown talent, the 32% win rate, labeling his team the poorest in Manchester United history. But there was one adversary with whom the Portuguese coach was not permitted to tango. If you challenge the sporting director, you had better succeed.

Regrettably, like many a top-flight defender during Blackburn Rovers' title-winning 1994-95 season, Amorim took on Jason Wilcox and appears to have failed. The most casual observer will notice the irony here: a manager who often railed his squad for failing in one-on-one duels crumbling in the face of the white heat and animal charisma of one of England's top division's most intimidating football executives.

And frankly, this entire painful saga seems to paint Jason Wilcox in a different perspective. It may have been tempting, given his nine months in a similar role at Southampton, to view Jason Wilcox as little more than a drudge within the club's structure: a man who owed his position as much to his close relationship with ex-colleague Omar Berrada as any demonstrable skill. How mistaken we all were. In brilliantly outmanoeuvring the club's celebrated head coach, as he outmanoeuvred the unfortunate Dan Ashworth before him, he has demonstrated to be among football's strategic masterminds: a tactical intellect of which United’s mid-table rivals are now rightly wary.

The Strategic Clash Over Formation and Philosophy

For example, it was the director who being involved in the hierarchy that hired the 3-4-3 fundamentalist Amorim in the first place, was instrumental in trying to persuade Amorim to ditch his favored 3-4-3. Naturally, these pleas were resisted. However, these judgements hold greater authority when issued from the mouth of a man the impeccable soccer background of Jason Wilcox, a veteran of three England caps and a contributor to a title-winning side decades past.

Perhaps in time he might agree to outline his reasoning to the rest of us. Maybe one day he might be asked why Amorim is walking away with a full payout, with no penalty clause activated. But Jason Wilcox speaks rarely in public, for excellent reasons. The real thinkers in football – men like him – simply operate on a plane beyond our own prosaic understanding. If he ever did speak, probably all we would hear would be high-frequency signals and four-dimensional whirring. Desiring an explanation is not the same as being prepared to comprehend it.

The Ultimate Authority Behind the Throne

But of course, in training our focus on the sporting director we are obscuring the real power behind the club's current leadership. The director is, after all, merely executing the commands of his line manager Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who privately has emphasized his desire for a four-man defense. According to reports, the owner has also suggested deploying the forward as a right wing-back. The owner is eager for the club to adopt analytics and metrics. According to ESPN, during a leadership summit early in his investment, he announced that United’s style to football “will be decided in this room”.

Ultimately, Ratcliffe is an expert in these intricate football matters, leveraging his background in petrochemicals and sailing. Above all he is immensely wealthy, and as we all know, the wealthy are superior: more insightful, sagacious, strategically brilliant, simply better. Whom else would you trust to manage a strategic plan of cost-cutting, the construction of a modern arena that looks a lot like someone’s leftover knitting, the signing of a new striker?

A New Football Hierarchy: Directors Over Managers

This represents a shift we are increasingly seeing at the elite levels of the game. For decades, teams mistakenly delegated major sporting choices to subordinate staff like managers, scouts – players themselves. Perhaps it was once feasible for an up-and-coming, innovative manager with ideas and drive to join a club and implement their plan supported to fruition. Yet how many businesses have such individuals set up? How many large-scale layoffs have they overseen? Far preferable to invest the real power where it belongs: the executive class, the casually dressed executives, the guys with impressive professional resumes. Better by far to decide the strategy by the directors and appoint a coach who will adapt their offering to suit. If coaches were once chefs, they are now more like Deliveroo drivers: not creating the product, but still ultimately answerable if it arrives poorly or fails of the box.

Nowadays, their job is increasingly less about crafting the philosophy and more about selling it: the front-facing representative on the front desk, the public face of an organisation they have minimal power to influence. A coach at Chelsea leads a team of very young players into Europe and wins domestic cups, and essentially gets sacked for talking. A manager at Celtic sees his reputation ruined whereas the people who hired him live to blunder another day.

The Modern Corporate Football: Accountability Only for the Coaches

And possibly in a small way this is simply neoliberalism in action: the elevation of a privileged overclass who are infallible, whose decisions are always sacrosanct, whose errors can always be resolved by sacking without justification. Hire the system coach only to fire them for using excessively 3-4-3. Hire the process guy and later discard him for taking excessive time. And above all be grateful; for your modest increases in ticket costs, for the latest summer signings, for the reality that the grownups – however well qualified – remain in control.