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Itranspired he could survive a loss to lower-league opposition. Survive an important European final versus a particularly poor Spurs sides for many years. He withstood losing at home to West Ham and Wolves, a lowly league position, his rigid approach, squandering some of the club’s most promising homegrown talent, a poor winning percentage, labeling the squad the poorest the club has ever seen. Yet, there existed a single opponent against whom Ruben Amorim would not be allowed to dance. You come at Jason Wilcox, you had better succeed.

Unfortunately, similar to numerous top-flight defender during Blackburn Rovers' championship campaign, the coach came at the executive and appears to have failed. The most distracted of readers will notice the paradoxical situation: a manager who often railed his squad for losing one-on-one duels crumbling in the face of the white heat and animal charisma 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 easy, given his brief stint of experience with the Saints, to view him as merely a functionary in the United exoskeleton: a man whose appointment was due as much to his close relationship with ex-colleague Omar Berrada rather than any verifiable talent. How wrong we all were. By masterfully outsmarting the club's celebrated manager, as he outmanoeuvred the unfortunate a previous executive earlier, he has proved himself as one of football's strategic masterminds: a tactical intellect of which United’s competitors will now be justifiably concerned.

A Strategic Clash Over System & Ideology

To illustrate, this was Jason Wilcox who having been part of the hierarchy that hired the rigid 3-4-3 advocate Amorim originally, 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 issued by a man with the unimpeachable football pedigree he possesses, a veteran of three England caps and a contributor to a title-winning side decades past.

Perhaps in time he might agree to outline his thought processes publicly. Perhaps at some point questions may arise regarding why the coach is walking away with full compensation, without any compensation reduction clause activated. But Jason Wilcox speaks rarely publicly, for excellent reasons. The true intellectuals of this sport – men like Jason Wilcox – simply operate on a plane exceeding our mundane comprehension. If he ever did speak, most likely all we would hear would be ultrasonic blips and complex calculations. Desiring an explanation is not quite equivalent to being prepared to receive.

The Supreme Power Behind Command

Naturally, by focusing our attention on Jason Wilcox we are obscuring the true genius behind the club's current leadership. Jason Wilcox is, in reality, merely executing the directives of his ultimate line manager the billionaire owner, who in private has made very clear his preference for a back four. It is reported, the owner has also proposed deploying the forward as a right wing-back. Ratcliffe is keen for the club to adopt analytics and analytics. Per reports, in an executive meeting early in his investment, he declared that United’s style of play “will be decided in this room”.

After all, Ratcliffe is a specialist in this technical footballing stuff, leveraging his previous experience in industry and sailing. Most importantly he is immensely wealthy, and it is known, the rich are the best of us: more perceptive, more wise, strategically brilliant, simply better. Who else could one trust to manage an enlightened programme of austerity, the construction of a modern arena that looks a lot like an abstract design, the signing of Benjamin Sesko?

A New Football Hierarchy: Executives Above Coaches

This represents a shift we are increasingly seeing at the elite levels football. For decades, clubs foolishly delegated big footballing decisions to subordinate staff such as coaches, scouts – players themselves. Perhaps it was once feasible for a young, innovative manager with ideas and drive to go into an organization and implement their plan through to completion. But how many businesses have these guys established? How many large-scale layoffs have they managed? Far preferable to place the real power where it rightly belongs: the executive class, the casually dressed executives, the guys with the jaw-dropping LinkedIn profiles. It is wiser to determine the strategy by the directors and appoint someone who will adapt their methods accordingly. If coaches were once chefs, they are now more akin to delivery personnel: not really creating the food, but still ultimately answerable if it arrives poorly or leaks out of the box.

In the meantime, their job is increasingly not about crafting the philosophy and more about selling it: the receptionist of the operation, the visible figurehead of an organisation they have minimal power to change. Enzo Maresca takes a squad of literal children into the Champions League and secures two medium-sized trophies, and essentially is dismissed for talking. A manager at Celtic finds his reputation ruined while those individuals who appointed him live to blunder indefinitely.

A Modern Corporate Game: Responsibility for the Few

And possibly in a small way this represents corporate governance in action: the elevation of a gilded elite who are infallible, whose decisions remain sacrosanct, whose mistakes can invariably be resolved by sacking without explanation. Hire the 3-4-3 coach and then dismiss them for playing too much that system. Hire the project manager and then bin him for taking excessive time. And above all be grateful; for the incremental increases in ticket costs, for the latest summer signings, for the reality that the adults – however well qualified – are in charge.