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Itranspired he endured a loss to lower-league opposition. Survive losing a crucial continental showpiece versus one of the worst Tottenham teams for many years. He could survive losing at home to domestic rivals, finishing 15th, the tactical inflexibility, undermining the team's most promising homegrown talent, a poor winning percentage, calling the squad the poorest the club has ever seen. But there was a single opponent with whom Ruben Amorim would not be allowed to tango. If you challenge the sporting director, you had better succeed.

Unfortunately, similar to numerous Premiership defender in Blackburn’s championship 1994-95 season, Amorim took on the executive and seems to have missed. Even the most distracted of readers will notice the irony here: a coach who often railed at his players for losing one-on-one duels crumbling when confronted by the white heat and animal charisma of a the Premier League’s most feared sporting directors.

In truth, this whole painful saga appears to portray the director in a whole new light. It may have been easy, given his nine months of experience with the Saints, to view him as little more than a functionary within the club's structure: an individual who owed his position as much to his close relationship with ex-colleague a fellow executive as any verifiable talent. How wrong everyone was. In brilliantly outsmarting United’s feted head coach, as he outmanoeuvred the unfortunate a previous executive earlier, Jason Wilcox has proved himself to be among the sport’s true generals: a tactical intellect of which United’s competitors will now be justifiably concerned.

The Tactical Clash Regarding System and Ideology

To illustrate, it was the director who being involved in the hierarchy that appointed the 3-4-3 fundamentalist the coach originally, played a key role in trying to persuade him to ditch his beloved 3-4-3. Naturally, these entreaties faced pushback. But perhaps such directives carry more weight when issued from the mouth with the unimpeachable football pedigree he possesses, a veteran of three England caps and a role in a title-winning side decades past.

Perhaps in time Jason Wilcox might agree to outline his thought processes publicly. Maybe one day he might be asked why Amorim is walking away with a full payout, without any penalty clause in place. The director seldom speaks in public, and with very good reason. The true intellectuals of this sport – men like Jason Wilcox – simply operate on a plane beyond our own prosaic understanding. Were he to speak, probably all we would hear is a series of ultrasonic blips and four-dimensional whirring. Wanting is not quite the same as being ready to comprehend it.

An Ultimate Power In the Throne

Naturally, by focusing our attention on the sporting director we are obscuring the real power behind the club's current leadership. The director is, in reality, merely executing the directives of his ultimate line manager the billionaire owner, who in private has made very clear his preference for a back four. It is reported, Ratcliffe has also proposed playing Bryan Mbeumo as a right wing-back. Ratcliffe is keen for the club to embrace analytics and analytics. Per reports, during a leadership summit soon after his investment, he declared that the team's approach of play “shall be determined by this group”.

Ultimately, Ratcliffe is a specialist in these intricate footballing stuff, drawing from his previous experience in petrochemicals and yachting. Most importantly he is incredibly rich, and as we all know, the rich are the best of us: more insightful, more wise, more tactically astute, simply better. Who else could one trust to oversee a strategic plan of austerity, the construction of a new stadium that appears a lot like someone’s leftover knitting, the signing of Benjamin Sesko?

The New Football Order: Directors Over Managers

This represents a shift that is becoming prevalent at the elite levels football. For decades, clubs foolishly entrusted major sporting choices to low-level employees like managers, scouts – even footballers. Perhaps it was once feasible for a young, innovative manager with ideas and energy to join a club and see their vision through to completion. But how many companies have such individuals set up? What number of mass redundancies have they managed? Far preferable to place the real power where it rightly belongs: the executive class, the open-necked shirt brigade, the guys with impressive professional resumes. Better by far to determine the tactics by the directors and appoint a coach who will adapt their methods to suit. If coaches were formerly chefs, they are now more like Deliveroo drivers: not really creating the food, yet ultimately answerable if it arrives poorly or leaks out to meet standards.

Nowadays, their job is increasingly less about crafting the philosophy and more about selling it: the receptionist of the operation, the public face of an organisation they can do little to influence. A coach at Chelsea takes a squad of literal children into the Champions League and wins two medium-sized trophies, and essentially gets sacked for talking. Wilfried Nancy sees his standing damaged while those individuals who hired him continue to make errors another day.

A Modern Corporate Game: Accountability for the Few

And possibly on some microcosmic level this represents corporate governance at work: the elevation of a gilded overclass who are infallible, whose decisions remain sacrosanct, whose mistakes can invariably be sacked away without justification. Appoint the system coach and then fire them for using too much 3-4-3. Hire the project manager and later bin them for requiring excessive time. And above all be grateful; for your modest increases in ticket costs, for the latest summer signings, for the reality that the grownups – regardless of their expertise – remain in control.