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Iturns out he could survive defeat by lower-league opposition. Survive losing a crucial continental showpiece versus a particularly poor Tottenham teams in living memory. He could survive home defeats against West Ham and Wolves, a lowly league position, his rigid approach, laying waste to the team's best homegrown talent, a poor winning percentage, labeling the squad the poorest the club has ever seen. But there was a single opponent against whom Ruben Amorim was not permitted to tango. If you challenge Jason Wilcox, and you best not miss.

Unfortunately, similar to numerous top-flight defender during Blackburn Rovers' championship 1994-95 season, the coach took on the executive and seems to have missed. The most distracted of readers 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 sporting directors.

And frankly, this entire bruising episode seems to paint the director in a different perspective. It may have been tempting, based on his brief stint of experience at Southampton, to regard him as little more than a drudge within the club's structure: an individual whose appointment was due as much to his friendship with his former boss Omar Berrada as any demonstrable skill. How wrong everyone was. By masterfully outmanoeuvring United’s feted manager, as he outmanoeuvred the unfortunate Dan Ashworth earlier, Jason Wilcox has proved himself to be among the sport’s true generals: a tactical intellect of which United’s competitors will now be justifiably concerned.

The Strategic Conflict Regarding Formation & Ideology

To illustrate, it was Jason Wilcox , after having been part of the hierarchy that hired the rigid 3-4-3 advocate the coach in the first place, was instrumental in attempting to convince Amorim to ditch his favored 3-4-3. Unsurprisingly, these pleas met a certain resistance. But perhaps such directives hold greater authority when delivered by a man with the unimpeachable football pedigree of Jason Wilcox, a veteran of international appearances and a role in a championship team decades past.

Perhaps in time Jason Wilcox might agree to explain his thought processes to the rest of us. Maybe one day he might be asked why Amorim is walking away with full compensation, with no penalty clause activated. The director seldom speaks publicly, and with very good reason. The real thinkers of this sport – individuals such as him – simply operate on a plane beyond our own prosaic understanding. Were he to speak, most likely all we would hear would be high-frequency signals and complex calculations. Desiring an explanation is not quite equivalent to being ready to comprehend it.

The Supreme Power In the Throne

Naturally, in training our focus on Jason Wilcox we are obscuring the real power behind the club's current leadership. Jason Wilcox is, in reality, merely executing the directives of his superior Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who in private has made very clear his preference for a four-man defense. According to reports, Ratcliffe has also suggested deploying the forward in a wing-back role. The owner is eager for United to adopt analytics and analytics. Per reports, in an executive meeting soon after his minority ownership, he declared that the team's approach to football “will be decided in this room”.

After all, Ratcliffe is a specialist in this technical footballing stuff, leveraging his background in petrochemicals and sailing. Most importantly he is incredibly rich, and it is known, the wealthy are the best of us: more insightful, sagacious, more tactically astute, simply superior. Whom else would you trust to manage an enlightened programme of austerity, the construction of a new stadium that looks a lot like an abstract design, the acquisition of Benjamin Sesko?

A New Football Hierarchy: Directors Over Managers

This is a trend we are increasingly seeing at the elite levels football. Historically, teams mistakenly delegated major sporting choices to low-level employees such as coaches, talent spotters – players themselves. Perhaps it was once feasible for a young, innovative manager with a philosophy and energy to go into an organization and see their vision through to completion. Yet how many businesses have these guys established? How many mass redundancies have they overseen? Far preferable to invest the real power where it rightly belongs: the executive class, the casually dressed executives, the guys with the jaw-dropping LinkedIn profiles. Better by far to decide the strategy in the boardroom and appoint a coach who will adapt their offering to suit. If coaches were once chefs, they have become more akin to delivery personnel: not creating the food, but still ultimately answerable should it be delivered poorly or fails to meet standards.

In the meantime, their job has become not about defining the vision and more about marketing it: the receptionist of the operation, the visible figurehead of an organisation they can do little to influence. Enzo Maresca leads a team of very young players into the Champions League and secures domestic cups, and effectively is dismissed for speaking out. Wilfried Nancy sees his standing damaged whereas those individuals who hired him live to blunder indefinitely.

A Neoliberal Game: Accountability for the Coaches

And perhaps in a small way this is simply neoliberalism at work: the elevation of a gilded overclass who can never be wrong, whose choices are always untouchable, whose mistakes can always be sacked away without justification. Hire the 3-4-3 coach and then dismiss them for using excessively that system. Bring in the project manager and later bin him for requiring excessive time. And above all show gratitude; for your modest increases in ticket costs, for your new player acquisitions, for the reality that the grownups – however well qualified – remain in control.