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Itbecame clear Ruben Amorim was able to withstand a loss to Grimsby. Survive an important European final against a particularly poor Tottenham teams in living memory. He could survive home defeats against domestic rivals, finishing 15th, the tactical inflexibility, squandering some of the club’s most promising homegrown talent, the 32% win rate, calling the squad the poorest in Manchester United history. Yet, there existed one adversary against whom Ruben Amorim was not permitted to engage. You come at the sporting director, you had better succeed.

Regrettably, similar to numerous top-flight right-back during Blackburn Rovers' championship 1994-95 season, Amorim took on the executive and appears to have failed. Even the most casual observer will notice the paradoxical situation: a manager who frequently berated his squad for failing in individual battles crumbling in the face of the white heat and formidable presence of a England's top division's most feared sporting directors.

And frankly, this entire painful saga appears to portray the director in a different perspective. It may have been tempting, based on his nine months of experience with the Saints, to view Jason Wilcox as little more than a drudge within the club's structure: a man who owed his position as much to his friendship with ex-colleague a fellow executive as any verifiable talent. How mistaken everyone was. By masterfully outsmarting the club's celebrated manager, as he outmanoeuvred the unfortunate a previous executive before him, he has demonstrated as one of the sport’s true generals: a tactical intellect of which the club's mid-table rivals will now be rightly wary.

A Strategic Conflict Over Formation & Ideology

To illustrate, this was the director , after being involved in the leadership that appointed the 3-4-3 fundamentalist Amorim originally, was instrumental in attempting to convince Amorim to abandon his favored 3-4-3. Naturally, these entreaties were resisted. However, these judgements hold greater authority when issued from the mouth of a man the unimpeachable football pedigree of Jason Wilcox, a veteran of international appearances and a contributor to a championship team from 31 years ago.

Perhaps in time Jason Wilcox might agree to explain his reasoning publicly. Perhaps at some point questions may arise regarding why the coach is walking away with a full payout, with no penalty clause in place. But Jason Wilcox speaks rarely publicly, and with very good reason. The real thinkers in football – men like him – function on a plane beyond our own mundane comprehension. If he ever did speak, probably we would perceive is a series of ultrasonic blips and four-dimensional whirring. Wanting is not quite equivalent to being prepared to receive.

An Ultimate Power In the Throne

But of course, by focusing our attention on the sporting director we overlook the true genius behind the club's current leadership. Jason Wilcox is, in reality, simply carrying out the directives of his ultimate line manager Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who in private has made very clear his preference for a back four. According to reports, the owner has also proposed playing Bryan Mbeumo in a wing-back role. The owner is eager for the club to embrace analytics and metrics. According to ESPN, during a leadership summit early in his investment, he announced that the team's approach of play “shall be determined in this room”.

Ultimately, Ratcliffe is an expert in these intricate footballing stuff, leveraging his previous experience in industry and sailing. Most importantly he is incredibly rich, and as we all know, the wealthy are superior: more perceptive, sagacious, strategically brilliant, simply superior. Who else could one trust to oversee a strategic plan of austerity, the construction of a new stadium that looks similar to someone’s leftover knitting, the acquisition of Benjamin Sesko?

The New Football Order: Directors Above Coaches

This is a trend we are increasingly seeing in top-tier football. For decades, clubs foolishly entrusted big footballing decisions to low-level employees such as coaches, scouts – players themselves. Perhaps it was once feasible for an up-and-coming, innovative manager with a philosophy and energy to go into a club and implement their plan supported to fruition. Yet how many businesses have these guys established? What number of mass redundancies have they overseen? Better by far to invest genuine authority where it rightly belongs: the executive class, the open-necked shirt brigade, the guys with the jaw-dropping LinkedIn profiles. It is wiser to decide the tactics in the boardroom and hire someone who can tailor their methods to suit. If coaches were once chefs, they have become more akin to Deliveroo drivers: not creating the food, yet finally accountable should it be delivered poorly or fails of the box.

In the meantime, a coach's role has become not about defining the vision and more about selling it: the receptionist on the front desk, the public face of an organisation they can do little to influence. A coach at Chelsea takes a squad of literal children into Europe and wins domestic cups, and effectively gets sacked for speaking out. A manager at Celtic finds his standing damaged whereas the people who hired him continue to make errors another day.

A Neoliberal Football: Accountability Only for the Coaches

And possibly on some microcosmic level this represents neoliberalism in action: the rise of a privileged elite who can never be wrong, whose decisions remain sacrosanct, whose errors can always be resolved by sacking without justification. Hire the system coach and then dismiss him for using excessively that system. Bring in the process guy and later discard them for taking too long. And above all be grateful; for the incremental season ticket price rises, for your new player acquisitions, for the reality that the grownups – regardless of their expertise – remain in control.