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Iturns out 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 withstood home defeats to West Ham and Wolves, a lowly league position, an unwavering system, squandering some of the club’s most promising homegrown talent, a poor winning percentage, calling the squad the worst the club has ever seen. But there was a single opponent with whom the Portuguese coach would not be allowed to engage. If you challenge the sporting director, and you best not miss.

Unfortunately, similar to numerous top-flight right-back in Blackburn’s title-winning campaign, the coach came at the executive and appears to have failed. Even the most distracted of readers will notice the irony here: a coach who often railed his squad for losing individual battles crumbling when confronted by the white heat and animal charisma of one of England's top division's most feared football executives.

And frankly, this whole painful saga seems to paint Jason Wilcox in a different perspective. Perhaps it might have been easy, based on his nine months of experience with the Saints, to view him as merely a functionary within the club's structure: a man who owed his position as much to his friendship with his former boss Omar Berrada as any demonstrable skill. How wrong everyone was. By masterfully outsmarting the club's celebrated manager, as he outmanoeuvred the hapless Dan Ashworth before him, Jason Wilcox has proved himself to be among the sport’s strategic masterminds: a strategic mind of which United’s mid-table rivals are now rightly wary.

The Strategic Conflict Over System & Ideology

To illustrate, it was the director who having been part of the hierarchy that appointed the 3-4-3 fundamentalist Amorim originally, played a key role in attempting to convince him to abandon his beloved 3-4-3. Naturally, these pleas met a certain resistance. But perhaps such directives carry more weight when delivered from the mouth with the unimpeachable soccer background he possesses, a veteran of three England caps and a contributor to a title-winning side from 31 years ago.

Maybe eventually he might agree to outline his thought processes publicly. Perhaps at some point he might be asked regarding why the coach is walking away with full compensation, without any penalty clause activated. But Jason Wilcox speaks rarely in public, and with very good reason. The real thinkers of this sport – men like him – function at a level beyond our own mundane comprehension. 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 Ultimate Power In the Throne

But of course, in training our focus on the sporting director we are obscuring the true genius behind the modern United throne. Jason Wilcox is, in reality, merely executing the commands of his line manager the billionaire owner, who in private has emphasized his desire for a four-man defense. According to reports, Ratcliffe has also suggested playing Bryan Mbeumo in a wing-back role. Ratcliffe is keen for United to embrace data science and metrics. According to ESPN, during a leadership summit soon after his minority ownership, he announced that United’s style to football “will be decided by this group”.

Ultimately, Ratcliffe is an expert in this technical football matters, leveraging his background in petrochemicals and yachting. Most importantly he remains immensely wealthy, and it is known, the wealthy are the best of us: more perceptive, sagacious, more tactically astute, fundamentally superior. Whom else could one trust to manage an enlightened programme of austerity, the construction of a new stadium that appears similar to someone’s leftover knitting, the signing of a new striker?

The Modern Football Order: Directors Over Coaches

This is a trend we are increasingly seeing in top-tier of the game. For decades, teams mistakenly delegated major sporting choices to low-level employees such as coaches, scouts – players themselves. Perhaps it was once feasible for a young, visionary coach with a philosophy and energy to go into an organization and see their vision through to completion. But how many businesses have these guys set up? What number of large-scale layoffs have they managed? Better by far to invest genuine authority where it belongs: the executive class, the casually dressed executives, the guys with the jaw-dropping professional resumes. It is wiser to determine the tactics by the directors and appoint someone who can tailor their methods to suit. If managers were once chefs, they are now more like Deliveroo drivers: not creating the product, but still finally accountable should it be delivered poorly or fails of the box.

In the meantime, a coach's role is increasingly not about defining the vision and more about selling it: the front-facing representative on the front desk, the public face of an organisation they have minimal power to influence. Enzo Maresca takes a squad of very young players into the Champions League and wins domestic cups, and essentially is dismissed for speaking out. A manager at Celtic finds his standing damaged whereas those individuals who appointed him continue to make errors indefinitely.

The Neoliberal Game: Accountability Only for the Few

And perhaps in a small way this represents neoliberalism at work: the rise of a gilded overclass who can never be wrong, whose decisions are always sacrosanct, whose mistakes can invariably be resolved by sacking without explanation. Appoint the 3-4-3 coach and then fire them for playing too much 3-4-3. Hire the process guy and later discard them for requiring too long. And above all show gratitude; for your modest season ticket price rises, for the latest summer signings, for the fact that the adults – however well qualified – are in charge.