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Transpired he could survive losing against Grimsby. Survive losing a crucial continental showpiece against one of the worst Tottenham teams for many years. He withstood home defeats against West Ham and Wolves, finishing 15th, the tactical inflexibility, squandering the team's best homegrown talent, a poor winning percentage, calling the squad the worst the club has ever seen. Yet, there existed one adversary against whom Ruben Amorim was not permitted to dance. If you challenge the sporting director, you had better succeed.

Unfortunately, like many a top-flight defender during Blackburn Rovers' title-winning campaign, the coach took on Jason Wilcox and appears to have failed. Even the most distracted of readers can see the paradoxical situation: a manager who often railed at his players for failing in one-on-one duels crumbling in the face of the intense pressure and animal charisma of a England's top division's most feared sporting directors.

And frankly, this entire painful saga appears to portray the director in a whole new light. Perhaps it might have been easy, given his nine months in a similar role with the Saints, to view him as merely a drudge in the United exoskeleton: a man whose appointment was due as much to his friendship with ex-colleague Omar Berrada as any verifiable talent. How mistaken everyone was. By masterfully outsmarting United’s feted head coach, just as he bested the hapless Dan Ashworth earlier, he has proved himself as one of football's strategic masterminds: a tactical intellect that United’s competitors will now be justifiably concerned.

The Strategic Conflict Over Formation & Ideology

For example, it was the director who being involved in the hierarchy that hired the rigid 3-4-3 advocate the coach in the first place, played a key role in attempting to convince Amorim to ditch his beloved formation. Naturally, these entreaties met a certain resistance. However, such directives hold greater authority when delivered by a man with the impeccable football pedigree of Jason Wilcox, a veteran of international appearances and a role in a championship team decades past.

Maybe eventually he may be persuaded to outline his reasoning to the rest of us. Maybe one day he might be asked why Amorim is departing with a full payout, with no compensation reduction clause activated. The director seldom speaks publicly, and with very good reason. The true intellectuals in football – men like him – function at a level beyond our own prosaic understanding. If he ever did speak, most likely all we would hear would be ultrasonic blips and four-dimensional whirring. Desiring an explanation is not equivalent to being prepared to receive.

An Supreme Power In Command

Naturally, in training our focus on the sporting director we are obscuring the real power behind the modern United throne. Jason Wilcox is, in reality, merely executing the directives of his line manager the billionaire owner, who privately has emphasized his preference for a back four. According to reports, Ratcliffe has also suggested playing Bryan Mbeumo as a right wing-back. Ratcliffe is keen for United to embrace analytics and metrics. According to ESPN, in an executive meeting soon after his minority ownership, he announced that United’s style of play “will be decided by this group”.

Ultimately, Sir Jim is an expert in this technical football matters, drawing from his background in petrochemicals and sailing. Above all he is incredibly rich, and as we all know, the wealthy are superior: more perceptive, sagacious, strategically brilliant, simply superior. Who else would you trust to oversee an enlightened programme of cost-cutting, the building of a new stadium that appears a lot like an abstract design, the signing of Benjamin Sesko?

A New Soccer Hierarchy: Executives Above Managers

This represents a shift we are increasingly seeing in top-tier football. Historically, teams mistakenly delegated big footballing decisions to low-level employees such as coaches, talent spotters – players themselves. Maybe previously feasible for a young, innovative manager with a philosophy and drive to go into a club and implement their plan supported to fruition. Yet how many businesses have these guys established? How many mass redundancies have they overseen? Better by far to invest genuine authority where it belongs: the leadership tier, the casually dressed executives, the individuals with the jaw-dropping professional resumes. It is wiser to determine the tactics by the directors and hire a coach who can tailor their methods to suit. If coaches were once chefs, they have become more akin to delivery personnel: not really responsible for the product, but still finally accountable if it arrives cold or leaks out of the box.

Nowadays, a coach's role is increasingly less about crafting the philosophy and more about marketing it: the front-facing representative on the front desk, the public face of an organisation they have minimal power to change. A coach at Chelsea leads a team of literal children into Europe and secures two medium-sized trophies, and essentially is dismissed for speaking out. A manager at Celtic sees his reputation ruined while those individuals who appointed him live to blunder indefinitely.

A Neoliberal Football: Accountability Only for the Coaches

And perhaps in a small way this is simply corporate governance at work: the rise of a privileged overclass who are infallible, whose choices are always untouchable, whose errors can always be sacked away without justification. Hire the system coach and then dismiss them for using too much that system. Bring in the process guy and later discard them for requiring too long. And most importantly show gratitude; for your modest season ticket price rises, for your new player acquisitions, for the reality that the grownups – regardless of their expertise – are in charge.