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Iturns out the manager was able to withstand a loss to Grimsby. Survive losing a crucial continental showpiece versus a particularly poor Spurs sides in living memory. He withstood home defeats against West Ham and Wolves, a lowly league position, an unwavering system, squandering some of the club’s best homegrown talent, the 32% win rate, calling the squad the poorest the club has ever seen. But there was a single opponent against whom Ruben Amorim was not permitted to tango. If you challenge the sporting director, you had better succeed.

Regrettably, similar to numerous Premiership defender in Blackburn’s championship campaign, Amorim took on Jason Wilcox and appears to have missed. The most distracted of readers can see the paradoxical situation: a manager who frequently berated at his players for failing in individual battles succumbing when confronted by the white heat and animal charisma of one of the Premier League’s most intimidating football executives.

And frankly, this whole painful saga appears to portray the director in a different perspective. Perhaps it might have been easy, based on his brief stint of experience with the Saints, to regard him as merely a drudge within the club's structure: an individual whose appointment was due as much to his close relationship with his former boss a fellow executive rather than any demonstrable skill. How mistaken everyone was. In brilliantly outsmarting the club's celebrated head coach, as he outmanoeuvred the unfortunate a previous executive before him, he has demonstrated as one of the sport’s strategic masterminds: a tactical intellect that United’s competitors are now rightly wary.

A Tactical Clash Over Formation & Philosophy

For example, it was the director who being involved in the leadership that hired the 3-4-3 fundamentalist Amorim in the first place, played a key role in trying to persuade him to ditch his favored formation. Naturally, these entreaties faced pushback. However, such directives carry more weight when issued from the mouth with the impeccable football pedigree he possesses, a veteran of three England caps and a role in a championship team from 31 years ago.

Perhaps in time Jason Wilcox might agree to explain his reasoning to the rest of us. Perhaps at some point questions may arise why Amorim is walking away with full compensation, without any penalty clause in place. The director seldom speaks publicly, for excellent reasons. The true intellectuals of this sport – individuals such as Jason Wilcox – function at a level beyond our own prosaic understanding. If he ever did speak, probably all we would hear would be high-frequency signals and complex calculations. Desiring an explanation is not equivalent to being ready to comprehend it.

An Supreme Authority In the Throne

Naturally, by focusing our attention on the sporting director we overlook the real power behind the club's current leadership. The director is, after all, simply carrying out the commands of his ultimate superior the billionaire owner, who in private has made very clear his preference for a back four. It is reported, the owner has also suggested deploying the forward as a right wing-back. Ratcliffe is keen for the club to embrace analytics and analytics. According to ESPN, in an executive meeting early in his investment, he announced that the team's approach to football “will be determined by this group”.

Ultimately, Ratcliffe is an expert in this technical football matters, leveraging his previous experience in industry and yachting. Most importantly he remains incredibly rich, and as we all know, the rich are superior: more perceptive, more wise, more tactically astute, simply better. Who else could one trust to manage a strategic plan of austerity, the building of a new stadium that appears a lot like an abstract design, the acquisition of a new striker?

The Modern Football Order: Directors Over Coaches

This represents a shift that is becoming prevalent at the elite levels of the game. Historically, teams mistakenly delegated major sporting choices to low-level employees like managers, scouts – players themselves. Maybe previously feasible for an up-and-coming, innovative manager with a philosophy and energy to go into an organization and implement their plan supported to fruition. Yet how many companies have such individuals established? How many large-scale layoffs have they managed? Better by far to invest genuine authority where it belongs: the executive class, the open-necked shirt brigade, the guys with the jaw-dropping LinkedIn profiles. It is wiser to decide the strategy by the directors and hire a coach who will adapt their methods accordingly. If managers were once chefs, they have become more akin to Deliveroo drivers: not really creating the product, yet ultimately answerable should it be delivered cold or leaks out of the box.

In the meantime, their job has become less about crafting the philosophy and more about selling it: the receptionist of the operation, the visible figurehead for a club they can do little to change. A coach at Chelsea leads a team of very young players into the Champions League and wins domestic cups, and essentially gets sacked for speaking out. Wilfried Nancy sees his reputation ruined while the people who hired him continue to make errors indefinitely.

The Modern Corporate Game: Accountability Only for the Few

And possibly in a small way this represents neoliberalism at work: the rise of a gilded overclass who can never be wrong, whose choices are always untouchable, whose errors can always be resolved by sacking without justification. 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 too long. And most importantly be grateful; for your modest increases in ticket costs, for the latest player acquisitions, for the reality that the grownups – however well qualified – remain in control.