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Transpired the manager was able to withstand a loss to lower-league opposition. He weathered an important continental showpiece against one of the worst Tottenham teams in living memory. He could survive home defeats to West Ham and Wolves, a lowly league position, his rigid approach, squandering the team's best academy products, a poor winning percentage, labeling the squad the worst in Manchester United history. But there was one adversary with whom the Portuguese coach would not be allowed to tango. If you challenge the sporting director, you had better succeed.

Regrettably, like many a Premiership defender during Blackburn Rovers' championship campaign, the coach took on Jason Wilcox and appears to have missed. The most casual observer will notice the irony here: a manager who often railed at his players for losing one-on-one duels crumbling when confronted by the intense pressure and formidable presence of one of England's top division's most feared sporting directors.

And frankly, this entire bruising episode seems to paint the director in a different perspective. Perhaps it might have been easy, based on his brief stint in a similar role at Southampton, to regard him as merely a drudge within the club's structure: an individual who owed his position largely to his close relationship with ex-colleague a fellow executive as any verifiable talent. How mistaken we all were. By masterfully outsmarting United’s feted manager, as he outmanoeuvred the unfortunate a previous executive before him, he has proved himself to be among football's strategic masterminds: a tactical intellect that the club's competitors will now be rightly wary.

A Strategic Clash Over System and Philosophy

For example, it was the director , after being involved in the leadership that appointed the 3-4-3 fundamentalist Amorim in the first place, was instrumental in attempting to convince him to ditch his favored formation. Naturally, these pleas faced pushback. But perhaps such directives carry more weight when issued by a man with the impeccable soccer background he possesses, holder of three England caps and a contributor to a title-winning side decades past.

Maybe eventually he might agree to outline his reasoning to the rest of us. Perhaps at some point he might be asked why Amorim is walking away with full compensation, with no compensation reduction clause activated. But Jason Wilcox seldom speaks in public, for excellent reasons. The real thinkers of this sport – individuals such as Jason Wilcox – function at a level beyond our own prosaic understanding. Were he to speak, most likely we would perceive is a series of ultrasonic blips and complex calculations. Desiring an explanation is not quite equivalent to being ready to comprehend it.

An Ultimate Authority Behind the Throne

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 ultimate superior the billionaire owner, who privately has made very clear his preference for a back four. According to reports, Ratcliffe has also suggested deploying the forward as a right wing-back. Ratcliffe is keen for the club to adopt data science and analytics. Per reports, during a leadership summit early in his minority ownership, he declared that the team's approach of play “will be decided in this room”.

After all, Ratcliffe is an expert in these intricate football matters, drawing from his background in industry and yachting. Above all he is incredibly rich, and as we all know, the rich are superior: more insightful, sagacious, more tactically astute, fundamentally better. Who else would you trust to manage an enlightened programme of cost-cutting, the building of a modern arena that appears similar to someone’s leftover knitting, the acquisition of a new striker?

The New Soccer Order: Directors Above Coaches

This represents a shift that is becoming prevalent in top-tier football. For decades, clubs foolishly delegated major sporting choices to low-level employees like managers, scouts – players themselves. Maybe previously feasible for a young, innovative manager with a philosophy and drive to go into a club and implement their plan supported to fruition. But how many businesses have these guys established? What number of mass redundancies have they overseen? Far preferable to place the real power where it rightly belongs: the leadership tier, the casually dressed executives, the individuals with the jaw-dropping professional resumes. It is wiser to determine the tactics in the boardroom and appoint someone who will adapt their methods to suit. If coaches were once chefs, they are now more akin to Deliveroo drivers: not creating the food, yet ultimately answerable should it be delivered cold or leaks out of the box.

Nowadays, their job has become not about crafting the philosophy and more about marketing it: the front-facing representative on the front desk, the public face of an organisation they have minimal power to change. A coach at Chelsea takes a squad of literal children into Europe and wins domestic cups, and effectively gets sacked for speaking out. A manager at Celtic finds his reputation ruined whereas the people who hired him live to blunder indefinitely.

A Neoliberal Game: Accountability Only for the Coaches

And perhaps in a small way this is simply neoliberalism at work: the rise of a gilded overclass who are infallible, whose decisions are always untouchable, whose errors can always be sacked away without justification. Hire the system coach only to dismiss him for playing too much 3-4-3. Bring in the process guy and then discard him for requiring too long. And above all be grateful; for the incremental season ticket price rises, for the latest summer signings, for the reality that the grownups – however well qualified – remain in control.