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Turns out he could survive losing against lower-league opposition. Survive an important continental showpiece against a particularly poor Tottenham teams in living memory. He could survive losing at home against West Ham and Wolves, finishing 15th, his rigid approach, laying waste to some of the club’s best academy products, the 32% win rate, calling his team the poorest in Manchester United history. But there was a single opponent against whom the Portuguese coach would not be allowed to dance. You come at the sporting director, you had better succeed.

Unfortunately, similar to numerous top-flight defender during Blackburn Rovers' championship 1994-95 season, the coach took on the executive and seems to have failed. The most distracted of readers will notice the irony here: a manager who often railed at his players for losing individual battles crumbling when confronted by the white heat and animal charisma of a the Premier League’s most feared football executives.

In truth, this entire painful saga seems to paint Jason Wilcox in a whole new light. It may have been easy, based on his brief stint in a similar role with the Saints, to regard him as little more than 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 the club's celebrated head coach, as he outmanoeuvred the hapless a previous executive before him, Jason Wilcox has proved himself to be among football's true generals: a tactical intellect that the club's mid-table rivals will now be rightly wary.

The Strategic Clash Over Formation and Ideology

To illustrate, this was Jason Wilcox , after having been part of the hierarchy that hired the 3-4-3 fundamentalist Amorim in the first place, was instrumental in trying to persuade him to abandon his favored formation. Naturally, these pleas met a certain resistance. However, these judgements hold greater authority when delivered from the mouth of a man the impeccable soccer background he possesses, a veteran of international appearances and a role in a title-winning side from 31 years ago.

Perhaps in time Jason Wilcox may be persuaded to explain his reasoning to the rest of us. Maybe one day he might be asked regarding why the coach is departing with full compensation, without any penalty clause in place. But Jason Wilcox speaks rarely in public, and with very good reason. The true intellectuals in football – men like him – function at a level exceeding our prosaic understanding. If he ever did speak, probably we would perceive would be ultrasonic blips and four-dimensional whirring. Desiring an explanation is not quite equivalent to being ready to receive.

An Ultimate Authority In the Throne

Naturally, in training our focus on the sporting director we are obscuring the true genius behind the club's current leadership. The director is, in reality, simply carrying out the directives of his ultimate line manager Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who privately has emphasized his preference for a back four. According to reports, Ratcliffe has also suggested playing Bryan Mbeumo in a wing-back role. Ratcliffe is keen for United to adopt data science and analytics. According to ESPN, during a leadership summit soon after his investment, he announced that the team's approach of play “shall be determined in this room”.

Ultimately, Ratcliffe is a specialist in these intricate football matters, leveraging his background in petrochemicals and sailing. Above all he remains incredibly rich, and as we all know, the rich are the best of us: more perceptive, sagacious, more tactically astute, simply superior. Who else would you trust to oversee a strategic plan of austerity, the construction of a modern arena that looks a lot like someone’s leftover knitting, the acquisition of Benjamin Sesko?

The Modern Football Hierarchy: Executives Above Managers

This represents a shift that is becoming prevalent at the elite levels of the game. For decades, teams mistakenly entrusted big footballing decisions to subordinate staff like managers, scouts – even footballers. Maybe previously possible for a young, innovative manager with ideas and drive to go into a club and see their vision supported to fruition. Yet how many businesses have such individuals set up? What number of mass redundancies have they managed? Better by far to invest the real power where it rightly belongs: the executive class, the open-necked shirt brigade, the individuals with impressive LinkedIn profiles. It is wiser to determine the strategy in the boardroom and appoint someone who can tailor their offering accordingly. If coaches were formerly chefs, they have become more akin to delivery personnel: not responsible for the food, yet ultimately answerable should it be delivered cold or leaks out of the box.

Nowadays, a coach's role has become not about crafting the philosophy and more about marketing it: the front-facing representative of the operation, the public face for a club they have minimal power to influence. Enzo Maresca leads a team of literal children into Europe and secures domestic cups, and effectively gets sacked for speaking out. A manager at Celtic sees his standing damaged whereas those individuals who hired him continue to make errors indefinitely.

A Neoliberal Game: Responsibility for the Coaches

And perhaps in a small way this is simply neoliberalism at work: the rise of a gilded overclass who are infallible, whose decisions are always sacrosanct, whose errors can invariably be sacked away without justification. Appoint the system coach only to fire them for using too much 3-4-3. Bring in the project manager and later discard him for taking excessive time. And above all show gratitude; for your modest season ticket price rises, for your new summer signings, for the reality that the adults – regardless of their expertise – are in charge.