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Iturns out the manager could survive losing against Grimsby. He weathered losing a crucial continental showpiece versus a particularly poor Tottenham teams in living memory. He could survive home defeats against West Ham and Wolves, finishing 15th, the tactical inflexibility, laying waste to some of the club’s best homegrown talent, the 32% win rate, labeling the squad the poorest the club has ever seen. But there was one adversary against whom Ruben Amorim was not permitted to tango. If you challenge the sporting director, you had better succeed.

Regrettably, like many a Premiership defender in Blackburn’s title-winning campaign, the coach took on Jason Wilcox and appears to have missed. The most casual observer will notice the paradoxical situation: a manager who often railed his squad for losing one-on-one duels succumbing in the face of the white heat and animal charisma of one of the Premier League’s most intimidating football executives.

In truth, this whole painful saga appears to portray the director in a whole new light. Perhaps it might have been easy, based on his brief stint in a similar role with the Saints, 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 Omar Berrada as any verifiable talent. How wrong we all were. By masterfully outmanoeuvring United’s feted head coach, just as he bested the unfortunate a previous executive before him, he has proved himself as one of football's true generals: a tactical intellect that the club's competitors are now rightly wary.

A Strategic Clash Regarding Formation & Philosophy

For example, this was the director who being involved in the leadership that hired the rigid 3-4-3 advocate the coach in the first place, played a key role in trying to persuade him to ditch his beloved formation. Naturally, these pleas were resisted. But perhaps such directives hold greater authority when delivered from the mouth with the impeccable football pedigree he possesses, a veteran of three England caps and a role in a championship team decades past.

Perhaps in time Jason Wilcox might agree to explain his thought processes publicly. Perhaps at some point questions may arise regarding why the coach is walking away with a full payout, 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 – function at a level 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 quite equivalent to being prepared to receive.

The Ultimate Power In the Throne

But of course, in training our focus on the sporting director we are obscuring the true genius behind the club's current leadership. The director is, in reality, merely executing the directives of his line manager Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who in private has made very clear his preference for a back four. According to reports, Ratcliffe has also proposed playing Bryan Mbeumo as a right wing-back. Ratcliffe is keen for United to embrace analytics and metrics. Per reports, in an executive meeting soon after his minority ownership, he announced that United’s style of play “will be determined in this room”.

After all, Sir Jim is a specialist in these intricate footballing stuff, drawing from his previous experience in petrochemicals and sailing. Above all he remains immensely wealthy, and as we all know, the rich are the best of us: more insightful, more wise, strategically brilliant, simply superior. Whom else could one trust to manage a strategic plan of cost-cutting, the building of a modern arena that looks similar to an abstract design, the acquisition of a new striker?

A Modern Football Order: Directors Above Coaches

This represents a shift that is becoming prevalent at the elite levels of the game. Historically, teams mistakenly entrusted major sporting choices to low-level employees like managers, scouts – even footballers. Perhaps it was once possible for an up-and-coming, innovative manager with ideas and energy to go into a club and see their vision through to completion. But how many companies have these guys established? How many mass redundancies have they managed? Far preferable to place genuine authority where it rightly belongs: the executive class, the open-necked shirt brigade, the guys with impressive professional resumes. Better by far to decide the tactics in the boardroom and hire someone who can tailor their offering to suit. If managers were once chefs, they are now more akin to delivery personnel: not really responsible for the product, but still ultimately answerable if it arrives poorly or leaks out of the box.

In the meantime, their job has become not about defining the vision and more about marketing it: the receptionist of the operation, the visible figurehead of an organisation they can do little to change. A coach at Chelsea leads a team of literal children into Europe and wins two medium-sized trophies, and essentially gets sacked for talking. Wilfried Nancy finds his reputation ruined while the people who appointed him continue to make errors indefinitely.

A Modern Corporate Game: Responsibility Only for the Coaches

And possibly on some microcosmic level this is simply corporate governance in action: the elevation of a privileged elite who are infallible, whose choices are always sacrosanct, whose mistakes can always be resolved by sacking without justification. Appoint the system coach only to dismiss them for using excessively 3-4-3. Hire the process guy and later bin him for requiring too long. And most importantly be grateful; for the incremental season ticket price rises, for your new summer signings, for the fact that the adults – however well qualified – remain in control.