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Tbecame clear he could survive losing against Grimsby. Survive an important continental showpiece versus a particularly poor Tottenham teams in living memory. He withstood home defeats against West Ham and Wolves, finishing 15th, an unwavering system, undermining the team's best homegrown talent, a poor winning percentage, calling the squad the worst the club has ever seen. But there was one adversary with whom the Portuguese coach was not permitted to tango. If you challenge Jason Wilcox, you had better succeed.

Regrettably, like many a Premiership right-back in Blackburn’s title-winning campaign, Amorim took on Jason Wilcox and seems to have missed. Even the most distracted of readers can see the paradoxical situation: a coach who often railed at his players for losing individual battles succumbing when confronted by the white heat and animal charisma of a the Premier League’s most feared football executives.

And frankly, this entire bruising episode appears to portray Jason Wilcox in a different perspective. Perhaps it might have been easy, given his brief stint of experience with the Saints, to regard Jason Wilcox as merely a functionary in the United exoskeleton: an individual who owed his position largely to his friendship with his former boss a fellow executive rather than any verifiable talent. How wrong we all were. By masterfully outsmarting United’s feted manager, just as he bested the unfortunate Dan Ashworth before him, he has proved himself as one of the sport’s strategic masterminds: a strategic mind that United’s competitors are now rightly wary.

A Tactical Clash Over System & Ideology

To illustrate, this was the director who having been part of the hierarchy that hired the 3-4-3 fundamentalist the coach in the first place, played a key role in attempting to convince him to abandon his favored 3-4-3. Unsurprisingly, these pleas were resisted. However, such directives carry more weight when delivered by a man of a man the unimpeachable football pedigree he possesses, a veteran of international appearances and a role in a championship team decades past.

Maybe eventually Jason Wilcox may be persuaded to explain his thought processes to the rest of us. Perhaps at some point he might be asked why Amorim is walking away with full compensation, without any penalty clause activated. But Jason Wilcox speaks rarely publicly, and with very good reason. The real thinkers of this sport – individuals such as him – simply operate on a plane beyond our own mundane comprehension. Were he to speak, most likely we would perceive would be high-frequency signals and four-dimensional whirring. Wanting is not quite equivalent to being ready to comprehend it.

The Ultimate Power In the Throne

But of course, by focusing our attention on the sporting director we overlook the true genius behind the club's current leadership. Jason Wilcox is, after all, simply carrying out the commands of his ultimate line manager the billionaire owner, who in private has made very clear his desire for a back four. It is reported, the owner has also proposed deploying the forward in a wing-back role. Ratcliffe is keen for United to embrace analytics and metrics. According to ESPN, in an executive meeting early in his investment, he declared that the team's approach to football “will be determined in this room”.

Ultimately, Sir Jim is an expert in this technical footballing stuff, drawing from his previous experience in industry and sailing. Most importantly he remains immensely wealthy, and it is known, the rich are the best of us: more insightful, sagacious, more tactically astute, fundamentally better. Who else would you trust to manage an enlightened programme of cost-cutting, the building of a modern arena that appears a lot like an abstract design, the signing of a new striker?

The New Football Order: Directors Over Coaches

This represents a shift that is becoming prevalent at the elite levels of the game. For decades, teams mistakenly delegated major sporting choices to subordinate staff such as coaches, scouts – players themselves. Perhaps it was once possible for an up-and-coming, innovative manager with a philosophy and energy to go into a club and see their vision supported to fruition. But how many businesses have such individuals set up? What number of mass redundancies have they overseen? Better by far to invest the real power where it rightly belongs: the leadership tier, the casually dressed executives, the guys with the jaw-dropping professional resumes. Better by far to determine the tactics by the directors and hire a coach who can tailor their offering accordingly. If coaches were formerly chefs, they are now more like delivery personnel: not really creating the product, but still ultimately answerable if it arrives poorly or fails of the box.

In the meantime, their job has become not about defining the vision and more about marketing it: the front-facing representative of the operation, the public face 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 essentially gets sacked for speaking out. A manager at Celtic finds his reputation ruined whereas those individuals who hired him live to blunder another day.

A Modern Corporate Football: Responsibility Only for the Coaches

And possibly in a small way this is simply corporate governance in action: the elevation of a gilded overclass who are infallible, whose choices are always sacrosanct, whose mistakes can invariably be sacked away without explanation. Hire the 3-4-3 coach only to dismiss him for using excessively that system. Hire the process guy and then discard them for taking too long. And above all show gratitude; for your modest increases in ticket costs, for the latest summer signings, for the reality that the grownups – however well qualified – remain in control.