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Iturns out he endured defeat by Grimsby. He weathered a decisive continental showpiece versus a particularly poor Tottenham teams in living memory. He could survive losing at home to West Ham and Wolves, a lowly league position, the tactical inflexibility, undermining the team's best homegrown talent, the 32% win rate, calling his team the poorest the club has ever seen. Yet, there existed a single opponent against whom the Portuguese coach was not permitted to engage. If you challenge Jason Wilcox, and you best not miss.

Regrettably, like many a Premiership defender in Blackburn’s title-winning 1994-95 season, the coach came at Jason Wilcox and seems to have missed. Even the most distracted of readers will notice the paradoxical situation: a manager who frequently berated at his players for failing in one-on-one duels succumbing in the face of the white heat and animal charisma of one of England's top division's most feared football executives.

In truth, this whole bruising episode appears to portray Jason Wilcox in a different perspective. It may have been easy, given his brief stint in a similar role with the Saints, to regard Jason Wilcox as merely a functionary in the United exoskeleton: a man whose appointment was due as much to his friendship with his former boss a fellow executive rather than any demonstrable skill. How mistaken we all were. In brilliantly outmanoeuvring United’s feted head coach, as he outmanoeuvred the hapless Dan Ashworth earlier, Jason Wilcox has demonstrated to be among football's strategic masterminds: a tactical intellect that the club's competitors will now be justifiably concerned.

A Strategic Clash Over System and Ideology

To illustrate, it was the director , after being involved in the leadership that appointed the rigid 3-4-3 advocate the coach originally, played a key role in trying to persuade Amorim to ditch his favored 3-4-3. Unsurprisingly, these pleas met a certain resistance. But perhaps such directives hold greater authority when delivered by a man of a man the unimpeachable soccer background he possesses, a veteran of three England caps and a role in a championship team decades past.

Maybe eventually he may be persuaded to outline his reasoning to the rest of us. Maybe one day questions may arise why Amorim is departing with full compensation, without any penalty clause in place. The director speaks rarely publicly, for excellent reasons. The true intellectuals of this sport – 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. Desiring an explanation is not quite the same as being prepared to receive.

An Supreme Authority Behind Command

Naturally, in training our focus on Jason Wilcox we are obscuring the real power behind the club's current leadership. The director is, in reality, simply carrying out the commands of his ultimate superior Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who in private has made very clear his desire for a back four. According to reports, the owner has also proposed deploying the forward in a wing-back role. The owner is eager for United to embrace data science and analytics. Per reports, during a leadership summit early in his investment, he announced that United’s style of play “shall be decided by this group”.

Ultimately, Sir Jim is an expert in these intricate footballing stuff, drawing from his previous experience in industry and yachting. Most importantly he remains incredibly rich, and as we all know, the rich are superior: more insightful, sagacious, more tactically astute, simply superior. Who else could one trust to oversee an enlightened programme of cost-cutting, the construction of a new stadium that looks similar to an abstract design, the signing of a new striker?

A Modern Soccer Order: Executives Above Coaches

This is a trend that is becoming prevalent at the elite levels of the game. For decades, clubs foolishly delegated major sporting choices to low-level employees such as coaches, scouts – even footballers. Maybe previously feasible for a young, visionary coach with a philosophy and energy to join a club and implement their plan through to completion. But how many businesses have such individuals established? How many large-scale layoffs have they managed? Far preferable to place the real power where it rightly belongs: the leadership tier, the open-necked shirt brigade, the guys with impressive professional resumes. It is wiser to determine the tactics by the directors and appoint someone who will adapt their methods accordingly. If managers were once chefs, they have become more akin to Deliveroo drivers: not creating the food, but still finally accountable if it arrives poorly or leaks out of the box.

Nowadays, a coach's role is increasingly not about defining the vision and more about selling it: the receptionist on the front desk, the visible figurehead for a club they have minimal power to change. Enzo Maresca leads a team of literal children into Europe and secures domestic cups, and essentially is dismissed for talking. A manager at Celtic sees his standing damaged whereas the people who hired him live to blunder indefinitely.

A Neoliberal Game: Accountability Only for the Coaches

And perhaps on some microcosmic level this is simply corporate governance at work: the rise of a gilded overclass who are infallible, whose decisions are always untouchable, whose mistakes can always be sacked away without justification. Hire the 3-4-3 coach only to fire them for playing excessively that system. Bring in the process guy and later discard him for taking too long. And most importantly show gratitude; for the incremental increases in ticket costs, for the latest summer signings, for the reality that the adults – regardless of their expertise – remain in control.