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Iturns out the manager was able to withstand defeat by lower-league opposition. Survive a decisive European final versus one of the worst Spurs sides in living memory. He could survive losing at home to West Ham and Wolves, finishing 15th, his rigid approach, laying waste to some of the club’s best academy products, the 32% win rate, labeling his team the poorest the club has ever seen. But there was one adversary with whom Ruben Amorim was not permitted to tango. If you challenge the sporting director, and you best not miss.

Regrettably, like many a Premiership defender during Blackburn Rovers' championship 1994-95 season, the coach took on the executive and seems to have missed. The most casual observer will notice the paradoxical situation: a coach who frequently berated at his players for failing in one-on-one duels crumbling when confronted by the white heat and formidable presence of a the Premier League’s most intimidating sporting directors.

And frankly, this entire bruising episode appears to portray the director in a different perspective. Perhaps it might have been easy, given his nine months in a similar role with the Saints, to regard him as little more than a drudge in the United exoskeleton: an individual who owed his position largely to his friendship with ex-colleague Omar Berrada rather than any verifiable talent. How mistaken we all were. By masterfully outmanoeuvring United’s feted head coach, as he outmanoeuvred the unfortunate a previous executive before him, he has demonstrated to be among football's strategic masterminds: a strategic mind that United’s mid-table rivals are now rightly wary.

A Strategic Conflict Over System & Ideology

To illustrate, it was the director , after being involved in the hierarchy that hired the rigid 3-4-3 advocate Amorim in the first place, was instrumental in trying to persuade him to abandon his favored 3-4-3. Unsurprisingly, these entreaties were resisted. But perhaps such directives carry more weight when delivered by a man of a man the unimpeachable football pedigree he possesses, holder of three England caps and a role in a championship team decades past.

Perhaps in time he may be persuaded to explain his thought processes to the rest of us. Maybe one day he might be asked regarding why the coach is walking away with a full payout, with no penalty clause in place. But Jason Wilcox speaks rarely in public, for excellent reasons. The true intellectuals in football – individuals such as him – function at a level exceeding our prosaic understanding. Were he to speak, most likely all we would hear would be ultrasonic blips and four-dimensional whirring. Desiring an explanation is not quite the same as being prepared to receive.

The Ultimate Authority Behind Command

Naturally, by focusing our attention on the sporting director we are obscuring the real power behind the modern United throne. The director is, in reality, merely executing the commands of his line manager the billionaire owner, who privately has made very clear his preference for a back four. According to reports, the owner has also proposed playing Bryan Mbeumo in a wing-back role. Ratcliffe is keen for United to embrace data science and metrics. Per reports, during a leadership summit soon after his investment, he declared that the team's approach to football “shall be decided by this group”.

After all, Ratcliffe is a specialist in these intricate footballing stuff, drawing from his background in petrochemicals and yachting. Above all he remains immensely wealthy, and it is known, the wealthy are superior: more insightful, more wise, strategically brilliant, fundamentally better. Whom else would you trust to manage a strategic plan of austerity, the building of a new stadium that looks a lot like an abstract design, the signing of Benjamin Sesko?

The New Football Order: Directors Above Managers

This is a trend we are increasingly seeing at the elite levels football. For decades, teams mistakenly delegated major sporting choices to low-level employees such as coaches, talent spotters – even footballers. Perhaps it was once possible for a young, visionary coach with ideas and energy to go into a club and implement their plan through to completion. But how many companies have such individuals set up? How many large-scale layoffs have they managed? Better by far to place genuine authority where it belongs: the leadership tier, the open-necked shirt brigade, the individuals with impressive professional resumes. It is wiser to decide the tactics in the boardroom and hire a coach who can tailor their offering to suit. If coaches were once chefs, they are now more like Deliveroo drivers: not really responsible for the product, but still ultimately answerable if it arrives poorly or fails to meet standards.

Nowadays, their job has become not about defining the vision and more about marketing it: the receptionist on the front desk, the public face of an organisation they can do little to influence. A coach at Chelsea takes a squad of very young players into Europe and secures domestic cups, and essentially is dismissed for speaking out. Wilfried Nancy finds his standing damaged while the people who appointed him continue to make errors indefinitely.

The Neoliberal Football: Responsibility for the Few

And perhaps in a small way this represents neoliberalism at work: the elevation of a gilded elite who can never be wrong, whose choices are always sacrosanct, whose mistakes can invariably be resolved by sacking without explanation. Hire the system coach only to dismiss him for playing excessively that system. Hire the process guy and then bin them for requiring too long. And above all show gratitude; for your modest season ticket price rises, for the latest player acquisitions, for the reality that the adults – however well qualified – remain in control.