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Tbecame clear he endured a loss to lower-league opposition. He weathered an important continental showpiece versus a particularly poor Spurs sides for many years. He withstood losing at home to West Ham and Wolves, a lowly league position, his rigid approach, undermining the team's most promising academy products, the 32% win rate, labeling his team the worst in Manchester United history. Yet, there existed a single opponent against whom Ruben Amorim would not be allowed to engage. You come at the sporting director, and you best not miss.

Regrettably, like many a top-flight right-back during Blackburn Rovers' championship 1994-95 season, Amorim came at the executive and appears to have missed. Even the most distracted of readers can see the irony here: a coach who frequently berated at his players for failing in one-on-one duels succumbing in the face of the white heat and formidable presence of a the Premier League’s most intimidating football executives.

And frankly, this entire painful saga seems to paint the director in a whole new light. Perhaps it might have been easy, given his brief stint of experience at Southampton, to view Jason Wilcox as merely a functionary in the United exoskeleton: an individual who owed his position as much to his close relationship with his former boss Omar Berrada as any demonstrable skill. How wrong we all were. In brilliantly outmanoeuvring United’s feted head coach, as he outmanoeuvred the hapless a previous executive before him, he has demonstrated to be among the sport’s strategic masterminds: a strategic mind of which United’s competitors are now justifiably concerned.

A Strategic Conflict Over System & Ideology

For example, it was the director , after having been part of the leadership that hired the 3-4-3 fundamentalist Amorim originally, played a key role in attempting to convince him to abandon his favored 3-4-3. Naturally, these entreaties were resisted. But perhaps such directives carry more weight when issued from the mouth of a man the impeccable soccer background he possesses, a veteran of three England caps and a role in a title-winning side decades past.

Maybe eventually Jason Wilcox may be persuaded to explain his reasoning publicly. Maybe one day he might be asked regarding why the coach is departing with full compensation, with no penalty clause in place. The director speaks rarely publicly, and with very good reason. The true intellectuals of this sport – individuals such as him – function on a plane beyond our own mundane comprehension. Were he to speak, probably all we would hear is a series of ultrasonic blips and complex calculations. Wanting is not equivalent to being ready to comprehend it.

The Supreme Power Behind the Throne

Naturally, in training our focus on the sporting director we overlook the true genius behind the modern United throne. The director is, in reality, merely executing the directives of his superior the billionaire owner, who privately has made very clear his desire for a back four. According to reports, the owner has also proposed playing Bryan Mbeumo as a right wing-back. The owner is eager for the club to embrace data science and analytics. According to ESPN, in an executive meeting early in his minority ownership, he announced that the team's approach to football “will be determined by this group”.

Ultimately, Sir Jim is a specialist in these intricate football matters, drawing from his previous experience in petrochemicals and sailing. Above all he is incredibly rich, and it is known, the rich are the best of us: more perceptive, more wise, more tactically astute, fundamentally superior. Whom else could one trust to manage a strategic plan of austerity, the building of a modern arena that looks similar to someone’s leftover knitting, the signing of a new striker?

The Modern Football Order: Executives Over Managers

This is a trend we are increasingly seeing at the elite levels of the game. Historically, teams mistakenly delegated major sporting choices to subordinate staff like managers, talent spotters – even footballers. Maybe previously possible for an up-and-coming, visionary coach with ideas and energy to go into a club and implement their plan through to completion. But how many companies have these guys set up? How many large-scale layoffs have they overseen? Far preferable to invest genuine authority where it belongs: the executive class, the casually dressed executives, the guys with impressive professional resumes. It is wiser to decide the tactics in the boardroom and hire someone who will adapt their offering accordingly. If managers were once chefs, they are now more akin to Deliveroo drivers: not responsible for the product, but still ultimately answerable if it arrives poorly or fails to meet standards.

In the meantime, their job is increasingly less about crafting the philosophy and more about marketing it: the receptionist of the operation, the visible figurehead for a club they can do little to change. A coach at Chelsea takes a squad of very young players into the Champions League and secures two medium-sized trophies, and essentially is dismissed for talking. Wilfried Nancy sees his reputation ruined while those individuals who hired him continue to make errors another day.

A Neoliberal Game: Responsibility Only for the Coaches

And perhaps on some microcosmic level this represents neoliberalism at work: the rise of a privileged elite who can never be wrong, whose decisions are always sacrosanct, whose mistakes can always be resolved by sacking without justification. Appoint the system coach and then fire him for playing excessively that system. Hire the process guy and then bin him for taking excessive time. And above all show gratitude; for your modest increases in ticket costs, for your new player acquisitions, for the fact that the grownups – regardless of their expertise – remain in control.