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Tbecame clear he endured a loss to Grimsby. He weathered losing a crucial European final against a particularly poor Tottenham teams for many years. He could survive home defeats against West Ham and Wolves, a lowly league position, his rigid approach, squandering some of the club’s most promising academy products, the 32% win rate, labeling the squad the poorest in Manchester United history. But there was one adversary with whom the Portuguese coach would not be allowed to dance. If you challenge Jason Wilcox, you had better succeed.

Regrettably, like many a Premiership right-back in Blackburn’s championship campaign, the coach came at Jason Wilcox and seems to have failed. Even the most distracted of readers will notice the paradoxical situation: a coach who frequently berated at his players for failing in individual battles succumbing in the face of the white heat and formidable presence of one of the Premier League’s most feared football executives.

And frankly, this entire painful saga seems to paint the director in a different perspective. Perhaps it might have been tempting, given his nine months of experience with the Saints, to view Jason Wilcox as little more than a drudge within the club's structure: an individual whose appointment was due as much to his friendship with ex-colleague a fellow executive rather than any verifiable talent. How wrong we all were. By masterfully outmanoeuvring the club's celebrated head coach, as he outmanoeuvred the hapless Dan Ashworth earlier, Jason Wilcox has proved himself as one of football's true generals: a strategic mind that United’s mid-table rivals will now be justifiably concerned.

The Strategic Clash Regarding System & Ideology

To illustrate, it was Jason Wilcox who having been part of the hierarchy that appointed the rigid 3-4-3 advocate Amorim originally, played a key role in attempting to convince him to ditch his favored formation. Unsurprisingly, these pleas faced pushback. However, these judgements carry more weight when delivered by a man with the impeccable football pedigree he possesses, holder of three England caps and a role in a title-winning side from 31 years ago.

Maybe eventually Jason Wilcox might agree to outline his reasoning to the rest of us. Perhaps at some point he might be asked why Amorim is departing with a full payout, with no compensation reduction clause in place. The director seldom speaks in public, and with very good reason. The true intellectuals of this sport – men like Jason Wilcox – simply operate on a plane beyond our own prosaic understanding. If he ever did speak, most likely all we would hear is a series of ultrasonic blips and four-dimensional whirring. Desiring an explanation is not equivalent to being prepared to comprehend it.

An Supreme Authority In Command

Naturally, in training our focus on Jason Wilcox we are obscuring the real power behind the club's current leadership. The director is, after all, simply carrying out the directives of his line manager Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who in private has made very clear his preference for a back four. It is reported, Ratcliffe has also proposed deploying the forward in a wing-back role. The owner is eager for the club to adopt data science and metrics. According to ESPN, during a leadership summit early in his minority ownership, he announced that United’s style to football “will be decided in this room”.

After all, Ratcliffe is a specialist in this technical football matters, leveraging his background in petrochemicals and sailing. Most importantly he is immensely wealthy, and as we all know, the wealthy are the best of us: more insightful, more wise, strategically brilliant, simply better. Whom else would you trust to manage a strategic plan of austerity, the building of a modern arena that appears a lot like someone’s leftover knitting, the acquisition of a new striker?

The Modern Football Hierarchy: Directors Above Coaches

This is a trend we are increasingly seeing at the elite levels of the game. Historically, clubs foolishly delegated major sporting choices to low-level employees such as coaches, scouts – players themselves. Perhaps it was once feasible for an up-and-coming, innovative manager with ideas and energy to join a club and implement their plan through to completion. Yet how many companies have such individuals established? What number of mass redundancies have they overseen? Better by far to place genuine authority where it rightly belongs: the leadership tier, the open-necked shirt brigade, the guys with impressive LinkedIn profiles. Better by far to determine the tactics by the directors and appoint a coach who will adapt their offering accordingly. If managers were once chefs, they have become more akin to Deliveroo drivers: not responsible for the food, but still finally accountable if it arrives poorly or fails to meet standards.

In the meantime, 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 visible figurehead for a club they have minimal power to influence. A coach at Chelsea takes a squad of very young players into Europe and secures domestic cups, and effectively is dismissed for talking. Wilfried Nancy sees his reputation ruined while those individuals who appointed him live to blunder another day.

A Neoliberal Football: Responsibility Only for the Few

And possibly in a small way this is simply neoliberalism at work: the rise of a gilded overclass who can never be wrong, whose choices are always sacrosanct, whose mistakes can invariably be sacked away without justification. Hire the system coach only to fire them for playing too much 3-4-3. Bring in the process guy and later discard them for requiring too long. And most importantly be grateful; for the incremental season ticket price rises, for the latest summer signings, for the reality that the adults – regardless of their expertise – are in charge.