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Transpired he was able to withstand losing against lower-league opposition. He weathered a decisive continental showpiece versus one of the worst Spurs sides in living memory. He could survive home defeats to domestic rivals, finishing 15th, the tactical inflexibility, laying waste to some of the club’s best homegrown talent, the 32% win rate, labeling his team the worst in Manchester United history. Yet, there existed a single opponent with whom Ruben Amorim was not permitted to dance. You come at the sporting director, you had better succeed.

Unfortunately, like many a top-flight defender during Blackburn Rovers' championship campaign, Amorim took on Jason Wilcox and seems to have failed. The most distracted of readers will notice the paradoxical situation: a manager who often railed at his players for losing one-on-one duels crumbling in the face of the white heat and formidable presence of one of the Premier League’s most intimidating sporting directors.

And frankly, this entire bruising episode seems to paint Jason Wilcox in a different perspective. Perhaps it might have been easy, based on his nine months in a similar role at Southampton, to regard Jason Wilcox as little more than a functionary in the United exoskeleton: an individual who owed his position largely to his close relationship with his former boss a fellow executive rather than any demonstrable skill. How mistaken we all were. By masterfully outsmarting United’s feted manager, just as he bested the hapless Dan Ashworth earlier, he has proved himself as one of football's strategic masterminds: a strategic mind of which the club's mid-table rivals will now be rightly wary.

A Tactical Clash Regarding Formation and Philosophy

To illustrate, this was Jason Wilcox who having been part of the hierarchy that hired the 3-4-3 fundamentalist Amorim originally, was instrumental in attempting to convince Amorim to abandon his favored formation. Naturally, these pleas were resisted. But perhaps such directives hold greater authority when delivered 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 decades past.

Perhaps in time Jason Wilcox might agree to explain his reasoning to the rest of us. Maybe one day he might be asked regarding why the coach is walking away with a full payout, with no compensation reduction clause activated. But Jason Wilcox speaks rarely publicly, for excellent reasons. The real thinkers in football – individuals such as him – function on a plane exceeding our prosaic understanding. If he ever did speak, most likely all we would hear is a series of high-frequency signals and complex calculations. Wanting is not equivalent to being prepared to comprehend it.

The Supreme Power Behind Command

Naturally, by focusing our attention on the sporting director we overlook the true genius behind the club's current leadership. The director is, after all, merely executing the commands of his ultimate superior the billionaire owner, who in private has made very clear his preference for a four-man defense. It is reported, the owner has also suggested deploying the forward as a right wing-back. The owner is eager for United to embrace analytics and analytics. According to ESPN, in an executive meeting early in his minority ownership, he announced that United’s style to football “shall be decided by this group”.

After all, Sir Jim is a specialist in these intricate football matters, leveraging his background in industry and yachting. Most importantly he is immensely wealthy, and as we all know, the wealthy are superior: more insightful, sagacious, strategically brilliant, fundamentally better. Whom else could one trust to manage an enlightened programme of cost-cutting, the building of a modern arena that appears a lot like someone’s leftover knitting, the signing of a new striker?

The New Football Order: Executives Over Managers

This represents a shift we are increasingly seeing in top-tier of the game. For decades, teams mistakenly delegated major sporting choices to low-level employees like managers, scouts – even footballers. Perhaps it was once possible for an up-and-coming, visionary coach with a philosophy and energy to go into a club and see their vision through to completion. But how many companies have these guys established? How many mass redundancies have they managed? Better by far to invest the real power where it rightly belongs: the leadership tier, the open-necked shirt brigade, the guys with impressive LinkedIn profiles. It is wiser to determine the strategy by the directors and hire someone who can tailor their methods to suit. If managers were formerly chefs, they have become more akin to Deliveroo drivers: not really responsible for the product, yet finally accountable should it be delivered cold or leaks out of the box.

In the meantime, their job is increasingly less about defining the vision and more about marketing it: the front-facing representative on the front desk, the public face for a club they have minimal power to change. A coach at Chelsea leads a team of literal children into Europe and secures domestic cups, and essentially gets sacked for speaking out. Wilfried Nancy sees his standing damaged whereas the people who hired him continue to make errors another day.

The Modern Corporate Game: Responsibility for the Few

And perhaps in a small way this is simply neoliberalism in action: the elevation of a gilded elite who can never be wrong, whose decisions are always sacrosanct, whose errors can always be resolved by sacking without explanation. Appoint the system coach only to fire him for playing too much 3-4-3. Bring in the process guy and then discard them for taking excessive time. And most importantly be grateful; for your modest increases in ticket costs, for your new summer signings, for the reality that the adults – however well qualified – remain in control.