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Turns out the manager could survive a loss to lower-league opposition. He weathered losing a crucial continental showpiece versus a particularly poor Spurs sides in living memory. He could survive home defeats to West Ham and Wolves, a lowly league position, an unwavering system, undermining the team's most promising academy products, a poor winning percentage, labeling his team the worst the club has ever seen. But there was one adversary against whom the Portuguese coach was not permitted to engage. If you challenge Jason Wilcox, you had better succeed.

Regrettably, like many a top-flight defender during Blackburn Rovers' title-winning campaign, the coach took on the executive and appears to have failed. The most casual observer can see the paradoxical situation: a manager who often railed his squad for losing individual battles succumbing when confronted by the intense pressure and animal charisma of a England's top division's most feared sporting directors.

And frankly, this entire bruising episode seems to paint the director in a whole new light. It may have been easy, given his brief stint in a similar role at Southampton, to regard Jason Wilcox as merely a functionary within the club's structure: an individual who owed his position as much to his close relationship with his former boss a fellow executive rather than any verifiable talent. How mistaken we all were. By masterfully outmanoeuvring United’s feted manager, just as he bested the hapless a previous executive before him, Jason Wilcox has demonstrated to be among the sport’s true generals: a tactical intellect of which United’s mid-table rivals will now be rightly wary.

A Tactical Conflict Over Formation and Ideology

For example, it was the director who being involved in the hierarchy that hired the 3-4-3 fundamentalist Amorim in the first place, was instrumental in attempting to convince him to ditch his favored formation. Naturally, these entreaties met a certain resistance. But perhaps these judgements hold greater authority when issued from the mouth with the unimpeachable football pedigree he possesses, a veteran of international appearances and a contributor to a title-winning side decades past.

Maybe eventually Jason Wilcox might agree to outline his thought processes to the rest of us. Perhaps at some point questions may arise regarding why the coach is walking away with full compensation, with no compensation reduction clause in place. The director speaks rarely publicly, and with very good reason. The true intellectuals in football – men like Jason Wilcox – simply operate on a plane exceeding our prosaic understanding. If he ever did speak, probably all we would hear is a series of ultrasonic blips and complex calculations. Wanting is not equivalent to being prepared to receive.

An Ultimate Authority Behind Command

But of course, in training our focus on Jason Wilcox we are obscuring the true genius behind the club's current leadership. The director is, after all, merely executing the directives of his superior the billionaire owner, who in private has emphasized his preference for a four-man defense. According to reports, the owner has also suggested deploying the forward as a right wing-back. The owner is eager for United to embrace data science and metrics. Per reports, in an executive meeting soon after his minority ownership, he declared that United’s style to football “will be determined in this room”.

Ultimately, Ratcliffe is an expert in this technical footballing stuff, leveraging his previous experience in petrochemicals and sailing. Most importantly he is incredibly rich, and it is known, the rich are the best of us: more perceptive, more wise, more tactically astute, simply superior. Whom else would you trust to oversee an enlightened programme of cost-cutting, the construction of a new stadium that appears similar to an abstract design, the signing of Benjamin Sesko?

The New Soccer Hierarchy: Executives Above Coaches

This represents a shift that is becoming prevalent in top-tier football. For decades, teams mistakenly entrusted big footballing decisions to subordinate staff such as coaches, talent spotters – players themselves. Maybe previously possible for a young, visionary coach with ideas and drive to go into an organization and implement their plan through to completion. But how many companies have these guys established? How many large-scale layoffs have they overseen? Better by far to invest genuine authority where it belongs: the leadership tier, the open-necked shirt brigade, the individuals with the jaw-dropping professional resumes. It is wiser to decide the strategy in the boardroom and appoint a coach who will adapt their methods to suit. If managers were formerly chefs, they are now more akin to delivery personnel: not responsible for the food, yet finally accountable should it be delivered poorly or leaks out of the box.

In the meantime, a coach's role has become less about crafting the philosophy and more about selling it: the front-facing representative on the front desk, the visible figurehead of an organisation they have minimal power to influence. Enzo Maresca takes a squad of very young players into Europe and secures two medium-sized trophies, 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.

The Neoliberal Football: Responsibility Only for the Coaches

And perhaps in a small way this is simply neoliberalism in action: the rise of a gilded overclass who can never be wrong, whose decisions remain untouchable, whose errors can invariably be sacked away without justification. Hire the 3-4-3 coach and then dismiss them for playing excessively that system. Hire the process guy and later bin him for requiring excessive time. And above all be grateful; for the incremental increases in ticket costs, for the latest summer signings, for the reality that the grownups – however well qualified – remain in control.