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Tbecame clear Ruben Amorim was able to withstand defeat by Grimsby. He weathered a decisive European final versus a particularly poor Spurs sides in living memory. He could survive home defeats to West Ham and Wolves, a lowly league position, the tactical inflexibility, squandering some of the club’s most promising homegrown talent, the 32% win rate, calling his team the poorest in Manchester United history. But there was one adversary with whom Ruben Amorim was not permitted to dance. You come at the sporting director, and you best not miss.

Unfortunately, like many a Premiership defender during Blackburn Rovers' championship 1994-95 season, Amorim came at the executive and seems to have failed. The most distracted of readers will notice the irony here: a manager who frequently berated at his players for failing in individual battles succumbing in the face of the white heat and formidable presence of a the Premier League’s most feared sporting directors.

In truth, this whole bruising episode seems to paint Jason Wilcox in a whole new light. It may have been tempting, based on his brief stint in a similar role with the Saints, to view Jason Wilcox as little more than a drudge within the club's structure: an individual whose appointment was due largely to his friendship with ex-colleague a fellow executive as any verifiable talent. How mistaken everyone was. In brilliantly outmanoeuvring United’s feted head coach, just as he bested the unfortunate Dan Ashworth before him, Jason Wilcox has demonstrated as one of the sport’s strategic masterminds: a strategic mind of which the club's mid-table rivals are now rightly wary.

A Tactical Conflict Over System and Philosophy

To illustrate, it was Jason Wilcox , after having been part of the hierarchy that hired the 3-4-3 fundamentalist Amorim originally, was instrumental in trying to persuade him to abandon his beloved 3-4-3. Naturally, these pleas met a certain resistance. However, such directives hold greater authority when issued by a man with the unimpeachable soccer background of Jason Wilcox, a veteran of three England caps and a contributor to a championship team from 31 years ago.

Perhaps in time Jason Wilcox may be persuaded to explain his thought processes publicly. Maybe one day questions may arise why Amorim is walking away with full compensation, without any penalty clause in place. The director speaks rarely in public, for excellent reasons. The true intellectuals in football – individuals such as him – function on a plane beyond our own prosaic understanding. If he ever did speak, most likely all we would hear is a series of high-frequency signals and four-dimensional whirring. Wanting is not quite equivalent to being prepared to comprehend it.

The Ultimate Authority Behind the Throne

Naturally, by focusing our attention on Jason Wilcox we overlook the real power behind the modern United throne. The director is, in reality, merely executing the commands of his ultimate line manager the billionaire owner, who privately has made very clear his preference for a back four. It is reported, the owner has also suggested deploying the forward in a wing-back role. Ratcliffe is keen for the club to adopt analytics and analytics. Per reports, during a leadership summit early in his investment, he announced that United’s style to football “shall be determined in this room”.

Ultimately, Ratcliffe is a specialist in this technical football matters, drawing from his previous experience in industry and sailing. Above all he remains immensely wealthy, and as we all know, the rich are superior: more insightful, sagacious, strategically brilliant, simply better. Whom else would you trust to manage an enlightened programme of austerity, the construction of a modern arena that looks similar to an abstract design, the acquisition of a new striker?

The New Football Order: Directors Over Coaches

This is a trend that is becoming prevalent in top-tier of the game. For decades, clubs foolishly delegated big footballing decisions to subordinate staff such as coaches, scouts – even footballers. Maybe previously possible for a young, innovative manager with a philosophy and drive to join an organization and see their vision supported to fruition. Yet how many businesses have such individuals set up? What number of large-scale layoffs have they managed? Better by far to place genuine authority where it rightly belongs: the executive class, the open-necked shirt brigade, the individuals with impressive LinkedIn profiles. Better by far to decide the strategy by the directors and hire a coach who can tailor their methods accordingly. If coaches were once chefs, they have become more akin to delivery personnel: not really creating the food, but still ultimately answerable if it arrives cold or fails to meet standards.

In the meantime, their job has become less about defining the vision and more about selling it: the receptionist of the operation, the public face of an organisation they have minimal power to influence. A coach at Chelsea takes a squad of very young players into the Champions League and wins two medium-sized trophies, and effectively is dismissed for talking. A manager at Celtic finds his reputation ruined whereas those individuals who hired him continue to make errors indefinitely.

A Modern Corporate Game: Responsibility for the Few

And possibly on some microcosmic level this represents corporate governance in action: the elevation of a privileged elite who can never be wrong, whose choices are always untouchable, whose mistakes can invariably be resolved by sacking without justification. Hire the system coach only to dismiss them for playing too much that system. Hire the process guy and later discard them for taking too long. And most importantly be grateful; for your modest season ticket price rises, for your new player acquisitions, for the reality that the adults – however well qualified – are in charge.