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Tbecame clear the manager endured defeat by lower-league opposition. Survive losing a crucial continental showpiece versus a particularly poor Spurs sides for many years. He could survive home defeats against domestic rivals, a lowly league position, the tactical inflexibility, squandering some of the club’s most promising homegrown talent, the 32% win rate, calling the squad the poorest the club has ever seen. Yet, there existed one adversary against whom the Portuguese coach would not be allowed to dance. You come at Jason Wilcox, you had better succeed.

Unfortunately, like many a top-flight right-back in Blackburn’s championship campaign, the coach came at the executive and seems to have failed. The most distracted of readers will notice the irony here: a coach who frequently berated at his players for losing individual battles succumbing in the face of the white heat and animal charisma of one of the Premier League’s most feared football executives.

And frankly, this whole painful saga appears to portray the director in a whole new light. It may have been easy, given his nine months in a similar role with the Saints, to view him as merely a drudge within the club's structure: an individual whose appointment was due as much to his close relationship with ex-colleague a fellow executive as any demonstrable skill. How mistaken we all were. By masterfully outmanoeuvring the club's celebrated manager, as he outmanoeuvred the hapless Dan Ashworth earlier, he has demonstrated to be among football's true generals: a tactical intellect of which United’s mid-table rivals will now be justifiably concerned.

The Tactical Conflict Regarding Formation and Ideology

For example, it was the director who having been part of the leadership that appointed the 3-4-3 fundamentalist the coach originally, was instrumental in trying to persuade him to ditch his favored formation. Naturally, these pleas faced pushback. However, such directives hold greater authority when delivered from the mouth with the unimpeachable football pedigree he possesses, holder of international appearances and a role in a title-winning side decades past.

Perhaps in time Jason Wilcox might agree to outline his thought processes to the rest of us. Perhaps at some point he might be asked why Amorim is walking away with a full payout, with no compensation reduction clause in place. But Jason Wilcox speaks rarely in public, for excellent reasons. The real thinkers in football – men like him – function on a plane exceeding our mundane comprehension. If he ever did speak, most likely we would perceive is a series of high-frequency signals and complex calculations. Wanting is not quite equivalent to being ready to comprehend it.

An Supreme Power In Command

Naturally, in training our focus on Jason Wilcox we are obscuring the true genius behind the club's current leadership. The director is, in reality, simply carrying out the directives of his line manager the billionaire owner, who in private has made very clear his desire for a four-man defense. According to reports, Ratcliffe has also suggested deploying the forward in a wing-back role. Ratcliffe is keen for United to embrace data science and metrics. Per reports, during a leadership summit soon after his minority ownership, he announced that the team's approach to football “will be decided by this group”.

After all, Sir Jim is a specialist in these intricate footballing stuff, drawing from his previous experience in petrochemicals and yachting. Most importantly he is incredibly rich, and it is known, the wealthy are the best of us: more insightful, sagacious, more tactically astute, simply better. Whom else could one trust to manage an enlightened programme of austerity, the construction of a modern arena that looks a lot like an abstract design, the signing of Benjamin Sesko?

The Modern Soccer Hierarchy: Executives Above Managers

This is a trend we are increasingly seeing at the elite levels of the game. Historically, clubs foolishly entrusted major sporting choices to low-level employees such as coaches, talent spotters – even footballers. Maybe previously possible for an up-and-coming, visionary coach with ideas and drive to go into a club and implement their plan supported to fruition. But how many businesses have such individuals set up? How many mass redundancies have they managed? Better by far to invest the real power where it rightly belongs: the executive class, the open-necked shirt brigade, the guys with impressive LinkedIn profiles. It is wiser to decide the strategy by the directors and hire someone who can tailor their methods accordingly. If coaches were once chefs, they are now more like delivery personnel: not really responsible for the food, yet ultimately answerable should it be delivered poorly or fails of the box.

Nowadays, a coach's role is increasingly not about crafting the philosophy and more about selling it: the receptionist on the front desk, the public face for a club they can do little to change. Enzo Maresca takes a squad of literal children into the Champions League and wins two medium-sized trophies, and effectively gets sacked for talking. Wilfried Nancy finds his standing damaged while the people who hired him live to blunder indefinitely.

The Neoliberal Game: Accountability for the Coaches

And possibly on some microcosmic level this represents corporate governance in action: the rise of a gilded elite who are infallible, whose choices are always sacrosanct, whose errors can invariably be resolved by sacking without justification. Hire the system coach only to fire them for playing excessively that system. Hire the process guy and later bin them for taking excessive time. And above all show gratitude; for your modest season ticket price rises, for your new summer signings, for the reality that the adults – regardless of their expertise – are in charge.