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Tbecame clear he could survive a loss to Grimsby. Survive an important continental showpiece against one of the worst Tottenham teams in living memory. He could survive home defeats against domestic rivals, a lowly league position, his rigid approach, squandering the team's best academy products, a poor winning percentage, calling the squad the worst in Manchester United history. Yet, there existed a single opponent against whom Ruben Amorim would not be allowed to engage. If you challenge the sporting director, you had better succeed.

Unfortunately, similar to numerous top-flight defender in Blackburn’s title-winning 1994-95 season, the coach came at Jason Wilcox and appears to have missed. The most casual observer can see the paradoxical situation: a coach who often railed his squad for losing one-on-one duels succumbing in the face of the white heat and formidable presence of a the Premier League’s most intimidating football executives.

In truth, this whole painful saga seems to paint the director in a different perspective. Perhaps it might have been easy, based on his brief stint in a similar role at Southampton, to regard Jason Wilcox as merely a functionary within the club's structure: a man who owed his position largely to his close relationship with his former boss Omar Berrada rather than any verifiable talent. How mistaken everyone was. By masterfully outmanoeuvring the club's celebrated head coach, just as he bested the unfortunate a previous executive earlier, he has proved himself as one of football's strategic masterminds: a strategic mind that the club's mid-table rivals will now be justifiably concerned.

A Strategic Conflict Regarding System & Philosophy

To illustrate, it was Jason Wilcox who having been part of the leadership that hired the 3-4-3 fundamentalist Amorim originally, played a key role in attempting to convince him to abandon his favored 3-4-3. Naturally, these pleas faced pushback. However, these judgements hold greater authority when issued from the mouth with the impeccable soccer background he possesses, a veteran of three England caps and a contributor to a title-winning side decades past.

Maybe eventually Jason Wilcox might agree to explain his thought processes to the rest of us. Maybe one day he might be asked regarding why the coach is departing with full compensation, without any compensation reduction clause activated. The director seldom speaks in public, and with very good reason. The true intellectuals of this sport – men like him – function on a plane beyond our own prosaic understanding. Were he to speak, probably all we would hear is a series of ultrasonic blips and complex calculations. Wanting is not equivalent to being ready to comprehend it.

The 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, after all, simply carrying out the commands of his line manager the billionaire owner, who in private has made very clear his desire for a four-man defense. It is reported, the owner has also proposed playing Bryan Mbeumo as a right wing-back. Ratcliffe is keen for the club to adopt data science and metrics. Per reports, during a leadership summit soon after his investment, he declared that the team's approach of play “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. Most importantly he is immensely wealthy, and it is known, the wealthy are the best of us: more perceptive, more wise, more tactically astute, fundamentally better. Whom else could one trust to manage a strategic plan of cost-cutting, the construction of a modern arena that looks a lot like an abstract design, the signing of Benjamin Sesko?

A New Football Order: Executives Over Managers

This represents a shift that is becoming prevalent at the elite levels of the game. For decades, clubs foolishly delegated major sporting choices to subordinate staff like managers, scouts – even footballers. Maybe previously possible for a young, visionary coach with ideas and energy to go into an organization and implement their plan through to completion. But how many companies have these guys established? What number of large-scale layoffs have they managed? Better by far to invest the real power where it rightly belongs: the executive class, the open-necked shirt brigade, the individuals with the jaw-dropping professional resumes. Better by far to determine the strategy in the boardroom and appoint a coach who will adapt their methods accordingly. If managers were formerly chefs, they are now more akin to delivery personnel: not creating the product, but still finally accountable if it arrives cold or fails to meet standards.

In the meantime, their job is increasingly less about crafting the philosophy and more about marketing it: the front-facing representative of the operation, the visible figurehead for a club they have minimal power to influence. A coach at Chelsea takes a squad of very young players into Europe and secures domestic cups, and effectively gets sacked for speaking out. Wilfried Nancy finds his reputation ruined whereas the people who appointed him live to blunder indefinitely.

A Neoliberal Game: Responsibility for the Few

And perhaps in a small way this is simply neoliberalism in action: the elevation of a privileged overclass who are infallible, whose decisions are always untouchable, whose mistakes can invariably be sacked away without justification. Hire the system coach and then fire him for playing excessively that system. Bring in the project manager and then bin him for requiring excessive time. And above all be grateful; for your modest increases in ticket costs, for the latest player acquisitions, for the fact that the adults – however well qualified – are in charge.