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Itranspired Ruben Amorim endured a loss to lower-league opposition. He weathered an important continental showpiece against one of the worst Spurs sides in living memory. He withstood losing at home to West Ham and Wolves, finishing 15th, his rigid approach, squandering some of the club’s best homegrown talent, the 32% win rate, calling his team the worst in Manchester United history. But there was one adversary with whom the Portuguese coach was not permitted to engage. If you challenge Jason Wilcox, you had better succeed.

Regrettably, like many a Premiership right-back during Blackburn Rovers' championship 1994-95 season, Amorim took on the executive and appears to have failed. The most casual observer can see the paradoxical situation: a coach who frequently berated his squad for failing in individual battles succumbing when confronted by the white heat 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 different perspective. It may have been tempting, based on his nine months in a similar role at Southampton, to view him as little more than a functionary in the United exoskeleton: a man whose appointment was due largely to his close relationship with ex-colleague a fellow executive rather than any demonstrable skill. How wrong everyone was. In brilliantly outmanoeuvring the club's celebrated head coach, as he outmanoeuvred the unfortunate a previous executive before him, he has proved himself as one of football's true generals: a strategic mind that United’s mid-table rivals are now rightly wary.

The Strategic Clash Regarding Formation and Ideology

To illustrate, it was the director who having been part of the leadership that hired the rigid 3-4-3 advocate the coach in the first place, was instrumental in trying to persuade him to ditch his favored formation. Naturally, these pleas met a certain resistance. However, such directives hold greater authority when issued by a man of a man the impeccable football pedigree of Jason Wilcox, a veteran of three England caps and a role in a championship team decades past.

Perhaps in time Jason Wilcox might agree to outline his reasoning publicly. Perhaps at some point questions may arise regarding why the coach is walking away with a full payout, without any penalty clause in place. The director seldom speaks publicly, for excellent reasons. The real thinkers in football – individuals such as him – function at a level exceeding our mundane comprehension. If he ever did speak, most likely all we would hear would be ultrasonic blips and four-dimensional whirring. Wanting is not quite the same as being ready to comprehend it.

An Supreme Authority Behind Command

But of course, in training our focus on the sporting director we are obscuring the true genius behind the modern United throne. The director is, in reality, merely executing the commands of his line manager Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who privately has made very clear his desire for a four-man defense. According to reports, Ratcliffe has also proposed deploying the forward as a right wing-back. The owner is eager for United to embrace data science and metrics. According to ESPN, during a leadership summit soon after his investment, he declared that the team's approach of play “will be decided in this room”.

After all, Ratcliffe is an expert in this technical football matters, drawing from his previous experience in petrochemicals and sailing. Above all he remains incredibly rich, and as we all know, the wealthy are superior: more perceptive, sagacious, strategically brilliant, fundamentally superior. Who else could one trust to manage a strategic plan of austerity, the construction of a modern arena that appears a lot like someone’s leftover knitting, the signing of Benjamin Sesko?

A New Football Order: Directors Above Managers

This represents a shift we are increasingly seeing at the elite levels of the game. Historically, clubs foolishly delegated major sporting choices to subordinate staff like managers, talent spotters – players themselves. Maybe previously possible for a young, innovative manager with a philosophy and drive to join a club and implement their plan supported to fruition. Yet how many companies have such individuals set up? What number of mass redundancies have they overseen? Far preferable to place genuine authority where it rightly belongs: the executive class, the casually dressed executives, the guys with the jaw-dropping LinkedIn profiles. Better by far to determine the tactics in the boardroom and appoint a coach who will adapt their offering accordingly. If coaches were formerly chefs, they have become more like delivery personnel: not creating the product, yet finally accountable if it arrives cold or leaks out of the box.

In the meantime, a coach's role is increasingly not about crafting the philosophy and more about selling it: the front-facing representative of the operation, the visible figurehead for a club they have minimal power to change. A coach at Chelsea takes a squad of literal children into the Champions League and wins two medium-sized trophies, and effectively gets sacked for speaking out. A manager at Celtic sees his standing damaged while those individuals who appointed him continue to make errors another day.

A Modern Corporate Football: Accountability Only for the Few

And perhaps on some microcosmic level this is simply neoliberalism in action: the rise of a privileged overclass who can never be wrong, whose choices are always sacrosanct, whose errors can invariably be sacked away without explanation. Hire the 3-4-3 coach and then fire them for using excessively 3-4-3. Hire the process guy and later bin him for taking excessive time. And above all show gratitude; for the incremental increases in ticket costs, for your new summer signings, for the reality that the adults – however well qualified – are in charge.