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Tbecame clear the manager could survive defeat by Grimsby. He weathered an important continental showpiece versus a particularly poor Spurs sides for many years. He could survive losing at home against West Ham and Wolves, a lowly league position, his rigid approach, squandering the team's best homegrown talent, a poor winning percentage, labeling the squad the poorest the club has ever seen. Yet, there existed one adversary against whom the Portuguese coach was not permitted to engage. You come at the sporting director, you had better succeed.

Regrettably, like many a top-flight right-back during Blackburn Rovers' championship campaign, Amorim took on the executive and appears to have missed. Even the most distracted of readers can see the paradoxical situation: a coach who often railed his squad for failing in individual battles crumbling when confronted by the white heat and animal charisma of a England's top division's most feared football executives.

And frankly, this whole bruising episode seems to paint the director in a whole new light. It may have been tempting, based on his brief stint in a similar role with the Saints, to view Jason Wilcox as little more than a functionary within the club's structure: a man who owed his position largely to his friendship with ex-colleague Omar Berrada as any demonstrable skill. How wrong everyone was. By masterfully outsmarting United’s feted head coach, just as he bested the hapless a previous executive before him, Jason Wilcox has proved himself to be among football's strategic masterminds: a strategic mind that the club's competitors are now rightly wary.

A Strategic Clash Over Formation and Ideology

For example, it was Jason Wilcox , after being involved in the leadership that appointed the rigid 3-4-3 advocate Amorim originally, was instrumental in attempting to convince Amorim to ditch his favored formation. Unsurprisingly, these entreaties faced pushback. However, such directives hold greater authority when delivered by a man with the impeccable soccer background of Jason Wilcox, a veteran of three England caps and a contributor to a championship team decades past.

Maybe eventually he might agree to outline his reasoning to the rest of us. Perhaps at some point questions may arise why Amorim is walking away with full compensation, without any penalty clause in place. But Jason Wilcox speaks rarely in public, and with very good reason. The real thinkers in football – individuals such as him – function 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. Wanting is not quite the same as being prepared to receive.

The Supreme Authority In the Throne

But of course, by focusing our attention on the sporting director we are obscuring the true genius behind the modern United throne. The director is, in reality, merely executing the directives of his line manager the billionaire owner, who privately has made very clear his preference for a back four. According to reports, Ratcliffe has also proposed playing Bryan Mbeumo in a wing-back role. Ratcliffe is keen for the club to embrace analytics and analytics. According to ESPN, in an executive meeting early in his minority ownership, he announced that the team's approach of play “will be determined by this group”.

After all, Ratcliffe is a specialist in this technical football matters, drawing from his previous experience in petrochemicals and yachting. Most importantly he remains incredibly rich, and it is known, the rich are the best of us: more insightful, more wise, strategically brilliant, simply better. Whom else could one trust to oversee a strategic plan of austerity, the construction of a new stadium that looks similar to an abstract design, the acquisition of Benjamin Sesko?

A Modern Football Hierarchy: Directors Above Coaches

This is a trend that is becoming prevalent in top-tier football. Historically, clubs foolishly delegated big footballing decisions to low-level employees like managers, scouts – even footballers. Perhaps it was once possible for an up-and-coming, innovative manager with ideas and drive to go into a club and see their vision through to completion. Yet how many businesses have these guys set up? How many mass redundancies have they managed? Better by far to place the real power where it belongs: the executive class, the open-necked shirt brigade, the guys with the jaw-dropping LinkedIn profiles. It is wiser to decide the strategy in the boardroom and hire someone who can tailor their methods to suit. If managers were once chefs, they are now more like delivery personnel: not responsible for the product, yet ultimately answerable should it be delivered poorly or leaks out to meet standards.

In the meantime, their job has become less about crafting the philosophy and more about marketing it: the front-facing representative of the operation, the visible figurehead of an organisation they can do little to change. Enzo Maresca takes a squad of very young players into Europe and secures two medium-sized trophies, and effectively is dismissed for talking. Wilfried Nancy finds his standing damaged whereas the people who appointed him continue to make errors another day.

The Modern Corporate Game: Responsibility for the Coaches

And possibly on some microcosmic level this represents neoliberalism at work: the elevation of a privileged elite who can never be wrong, whose choices remain sacrosanct, whose errors can always be sacked away without explanation. Hire the 3-4-3 coach and then dismiss them for using too much that system. Bring in the process guy and then bin them for requiring too long. And most importantly be grateful; for the incremental increases in ticket costs, for your new summer signings, for the reality that the grownups – regardless of their expertise – are in charge.