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Tbecame clear he was able to withstand a loss to Grimsby. Survive an important European final against a particularly poor Tottenham teams for many years. He withstood losing at home to domestic rivals, finishing 15th, the tactical inflexibility, undermining some of the club’s best homegrown talent, the 32% win rate, calling his team the worst in Manchester United history. But there was one adversary against whom Ruben Amorim was not permitted to dance. If you challenge Jason Wilcox, and you best not miss.

Unfortunately, like many a top-flight right-back in Blackburn’s title-winning campaign, the coach came at Jason Wilcox and seems to have failed. The most distracted of readers will notice the irony here: a coach who often railed his squad for losing individual battles crumbling in the face of the white heat and animal charisma of one of the Premier League’s most feared football executives.

In truth, this entire bruising episode appears to portray Jason Wilcox in a different perspective. Perhaps it might have been easy, given his brief stint in a similar role with the Saints, to regard him as little more than a drudge in the United exoskeleton: a man who owed his position as much to his friendship with ex-colleague a fellow executive as any demonstrable skill. How mistaken we all were. In brilliantly outsmarting United’s feted manager, just as he bested the hapless Dan Ashworth earlier, Jason Wilcox has proved himself to be among football's strategic masterminds: a tactical intellect of which the club's mid-table rivals are now justifiably concerned.

The Strategic Clash Regarding Formation and Philosophy

To illustrate, it was Jason Wilcox who being involved in the leadership that hired the rigid 3-4-3 advocate the coach originally, was instrumental in attempting to convince Amorim to abandon his beloved 3-4-3. Naturally, these pleas faced pushback. But perhaps such directives hold greater authority when delivered by a man with the impeccable soccer background he possesses, a veteran of three England caps and a contributor to a championship team from 31 years ago.

Maybe eventually he may be persuaded to explain his thought processes to the rest of us. Perhaps at some point he might be asked why Amorim is departing with full compensation, with no penalty clause activated. But Jason Wilcox seldom speaks in public, and with very good reason. The true intellectuals in football – men like him – simply operate 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. Wanting is not quite the same as being ready to receive.

An Supreme Authority In Command

Naturally, by focusing our attention on Jason Wilcox we overlook the true genius behind the modern United throne. The director is, after all, merely executing the directives of his line manager Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who in private has emphasized his preference for a four-man defense. It is reported, Ratcliffe has also proposed playing Bryan Mbeumo as a right wing-back. Ratcliffe is keen for United to embrace data science and analytics. Per reports, during a leadership summit early in his minority ownership, he declared that the team's approach to football “will be determined by this group”.

After all, Ratcliffe is a specialist in this technical footballing stuff, leveraging his previous experience in petrochemicals and sailing. Most importantly he is immensely wealthy, and as we all know, the wealthy are the best of us: more perceptive, sagacious, more tactically astute, simply superior. Whom else could one trust to oversee an enlightened programme of cost-cutting, the building of a new stadium that appears similar to an abstract design, the acquisition of a new striker?

A New Football Hierarchy: Directors Above Managers

This is a trend that is becoming prevalent at the elite levels of the game. For decades, clubs foolishly delegated major sporting choices to low-level employees like managers, scouts – players themselves. Perhaps it was once feasible for a young, innovative manager with a philosophy and drive to go into a club and implement their plan through to completion. But how many companies have these guys set up? What number of mass redundancies have they managed? Better by far to invest genuine authority where it rightly belongs: the executive class, the casually dressed executives, the guys with impressive LinkedIn profiles. It is wiser to decide the tactics in the boardroom and hire a coach who will adapt their offering to suit. If managers were formerly chefs, they are now more like Deliveroo drivers: not responsible for the product, but still finally accountable if it arrives cold or leaks out to meet standards.

In the meantime, a coach's role has become less about defining the vision and more about selling it: the receptionist of the operation, the visible figurehead of an organisation they have minimal power to influence. Enzo Maresca leads a team of very young players into the Champions League and secures two medium-sized trophies, and effectively is dismissed for speaking out. Wilfried Nancy finds his standing damaged while the people who appointed him live to blunder another day.

A Neoliberal Game: Responsibility for the Few

And possibly in a small way this is simply corporate governance at work: the elevation of a privileged elite who are infallible, whose decisions are always sacrosanct, whose mistakes can always be resolved by sacking without justification. Hire the 3-4-3 coach and then dismiss them for playing too much that system. Bring in the project manager and later bin them for requiring excessive time. And above all be grateful; for your modest season ticket price rises, for the latest player acquisitions, for the fact that the grownups – regardless of their expertise – are in charge.