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Transpired he was able to withstand losing against Grimsby. He weathered an important continental showpiece against a particularly poor Spurs sides in living memory. He withstood losing at home against domestic rivals, a lowly league position, the tactical inflexibility, undermining the team's most promising academy products, the 32% win rate, labeling the squad the poorest the club has ever seen. Yet, there existed a single opponent with whom Ruben Amorim was not permitted to tango. If you challenge the sporting director, and you best not miss.

Unfortunately, similar to numerous top-flight right-back during Blackburn Rovers' championship 1994-95 season, the coach came at the executive and seems to have missed. Even the most distracted of readers can see the irony here: a manager who frequently berated at his players for failing in individual battles succumbing when confronted by the intense pressure and animal charisma of a England's top division's most feared sporting directors.

In truth, this entire painful saga appears to portray the director in a whole new light. Perhaps it might have been easy, given his nine months of experience with the Saints, to view Jason Wilcox as little more than a drudge in the United exoskeleton: a man who owed his position largely to his close relationship with ex-colleague Omar Berrada as any verifiable talent. How mistaken everyone was. In brilliantly outmanoeuvring the club's celebrated head coach, just as he bested the hapless Dan Ashworth before him, he has proved himself to be among football's true generals: a strategic mind of which the club's mid-table rivals will now be rightly wary.

A Strategic Conflict Over Formation & Philosophy

For example, this was Jason Wilcox who having been part of the leadership that hired the 3-4-3 fundamentalist Amorim originally, was instrumental in trying to persuade Amorim to ditch his favored formation. Unsurprisingly, these entreaties were resisted. But perhaps such directives carry more weight when issued by a man with the impeccable soccer background of Jason Wilcox, holder of international appearances and a role in a title-winning side decades past.

Maybe eventually Jason Wilcox may be persuaded to explain his reasoning to the rest of us. Perhaps at some point questions may arise regarding why the coach is departing with full compensation, without any penalty clause in place. The director speaks rarely publicly, for excellent reasons. The true intellectuals of this sport – individuals such as Jason Wilcox – simply operate on a plane beyond our own prosaic understanding. If he ever did speak, most likely all we would hear would be ultrasonic blips and complex calculations. Wanting is not quite equivalent to being ready to comprehend it.

The Ultimate Authority Behind the Throne

Naturally, by focusing our attention on the sporting director we are obscuring the real power behind the club's current leadership. Jason Wilcox is, in reality, simply carrying out the commands of his ultimate superior Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who privately has made very clear his preference for a four-man defense. According to reports, Ratcliffe has also suggested deploying the forward as a right wing-back. Ratcliffe is keen for the club to embrace data science and analytics. According to ESPN, in an executive meeting soon after his minority ownership, he announced that the team's approach of play “shall be decided in this room”.

Ultimately, Ratcliffe is an expert in this technical football matters, drawing from his previous experience in petrochemicals and sailing. Most importantly he remains incredibly rich, and as we all know, the wealthy are superior: more insightful, more wise, strategically brilliant, simply superior. Who else would you trust to oversee an enlightened programme of austerity, the construction of a new stadium that looks a lot like someone’s leftover knitting, the signing of Benjamin Sesko?

A Modern Football Order: Directors Over Managers

This is a trend we are increasingly seeing in top-tier of the game. Historically, clubs foolishly entrusted big footballing decisions to subordinate staff like managers, talent spotters – players themselves. Maybe previously possible for a young, innovative manager with a philosophy and energy to go into a club and see their vision through to completion. But how many companies have these guys established? How many large-scale layoffs have they managed? Better by far to place the real power where it belongs: the executive class, the casually dressed executives, the individuals with impressive professional resumes. It is wiser to decide the tactics by the directors and hire a coach who can tailor their methods accordingly. If managers were once chefs, they are now more akin to delivery personnel: not creating the product, yet ultimately answerable if it arrives poorly or fails of the box.

In the meantime, their job has become less about crafting the philosophy 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 leads a team of very young players into Europe and wins two medium-sized trophies, and effectively is dismissed for speaking out. A manager at Celtic finds his reputation ruined while those individuals who hired him live to blunder indefinitely.

The Modern Corporate Football: Responsibility for the Few

And possibly in a small way this represents neoliberalism at work: the elevation of a privileged overclass who can never be wrong, whose choices remain sacrosanct, whose errors can always be sacked away without justification. Hire the system coach only to fire them for using too much that system. Bring in the project manager and later discard them for requiring too long. And most importantly be grateful; for the incremental season ticket price rises, for the latest player acquisitions, for the fact that the grownups – however well qualified – remain in control.