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Transpired the manager was able to withstand defeat by Grimsby. He weathered an important continental showpiece against a particularly poor Tottenham teams in living memory. He could survive home defeats against West Ham and Wolves, finishing 15th, the tactical inflexibility, undermining the team's best academy products, the 32% win rate, labeling his team the poorest the club has ever seen. Yet, there existed a single opponent against whom Ruben Amorim was not permitted to tango. You come at the sporting director, you had better succeed.

Unfortunately, similar to numerous top-flight defender in Blackburn’s championship 1994-95 season, the coach came at Jason Wilcox and seems to have failed. Even the most distracted of readers can see the paradoxical situation: a manager who often railed his squad for losing one-on-one duels succumbing when confronted by the intense pressure and animal charisma of a England's top division's most intimidating sporting directors.

In truth, this whole painful saga appears to portray Jason Wilcox in a whole new light. Perhaps it might have been easy, based on his nine months in a similar role at Southampton, to view Jason Wilcox as merely a drudge within the club's structure: a man who owed his position as much to his close relationship with his former boss Omar Berrada as any verifiable talent. How wrong everyone was. By masterfully outmanoeuvring the club's celebrated manager, just as he bested the hapless a previous executive earlier, Jason Wilcox has proved himself as one of the sport’s strategic masterminds: a strategic mind of which United’s competitors will now be justifiably concerned.

A Strategic Conflict Regarding Formation and Ideology

For example, this was Jason Wilcox who being involved in the hierarchy that appointed the 3-4-3 fundamentalist Amorim originally, played a key role in attempting to convince Amorim to abandon his beloved formation. Unsurprisingly, these entreaties faced pushback. However, such directives carry more weight when issued by a man of a man the unimpeachable football pedigree of Jason Wilcox, holder of three England caps and a role in a title-winning side from 31 years ago.

Maybe eventually he might agree 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 in place. But Jason Wilcox speaks rarely publicly, and with very good reason. The true intellectuals of this sport – individuals such as Jason Wilcox – function at a level exceeding our prosaic understanding. If he ever did speak, probably all we would hear is a series of ultrasonic blips and complex calculations. Desiring an explanation is not quite the same as being ready to receive.

The Ultimate Power In Command

Naturally, in training our focus on the sporting director we are obscuring the true genius behind the club's current leadership. The director is, after all, merely executing the directives of his ultimate line manager the billionaire owner, who in private has made very clear his preference for a four-man defense. According to reports, Ratcliffe has also proposed deploying the forward as a right wing-back. Ratcliffe is keen for United to embrace analytics and metrics. According to ESPN, during a leadership summit early in his minority ownership, he announced that the team's approach to football “will be decided in this room”.

Ultimately, Ratcliffe is an expert in this technical football matters, drawing from his background in petrochemicals and yachting. Most importantly he remains immensely wealthy, and as we all know, the wealthy are the best of us: more insightful, more wise, strategically brilliant, simply superior. Who else would you trust to oversee an enlightened programme of cost-cutting, the construction of a modern arena that looks a lot like an abstract design, the signing of a new striker?

The New Soccer Hierarchy: Executives Above Coaches

This is a trend that is becoming prevalent in top-tier football. For decades, clubs foolishly delegated major sporting choices to low-level employees like managers, talent spotters – even footballers. Perhaps it was once possible for a young, visionary coach with a philosophy and energy to go into a club and implement their plan supported to fruition. Yet how many companies have these guys set up? What number of large-scale layoffs have they overseen? Better by far to place genuine authority where it rightly belongs: the leadership tier, the casually dressed executives, the guys with the jaw-dropping professional resumes. Better by far to determine the strategy in the boardroom and hire someone who will adapt their methods accordingly. If managers were once chefs, they have become more akin to Deliveroo drivers: not really creating the food, yet finally accountable should it be delivered cold or leaks out of the box.

Nowadays, a coach's role is increasingly less about defining the vision 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 leads a team of literal children into the Champions League and secures two medium-sized trophies, and effectively gets sacked for talking. Wilfried Nancy finds his standing damaged while the people who appointed him continue to make errors indefinitely.

The Modern Corporate Football: Responsibility for the Few

And possibly in a small way this represents corporate governance in action: the elevation of a privileged elite who can never be wrong, whose decisions are always sacrosanct, whose mistakes can always be sacked away without explanation. Hire the 3-4-3 coach only to fire them for using excessively that system. Hire the project manager and then bin him for taking excessive time. And most importantly show gratitude; for your modest increases in ticket costs, for the latest player acquisitions, for the fact that the adults – regardless of their expertise – remain in control.