🔗 Share this article

Iturns out Ruben Amorim could survive losing against Grimsby. He weathered an important European final versus one of the worst Tottenham teams for many years. He could survive home defeats against West Ham and Wolves, a lowly league position, an unwavering system, squandering some of the club’s most promising homegrown talent, the 32% win rate, calling the squad the worst the club has ever seen. But there was a single opponent with whom the Portuguese coach was not permitted to dance. If you challenge Jason Wilcox, and you best not miss.

Unfortunately, similar to numerous Premiership defender during Blackburn Rovers' title-winning 1994-95 season, the coach took on Jason Wilcox and seems to have failed. The most distracted of readers will notice the irony here: a coach who frequently berated at his players for losing one-on-one duels succumbing in the face of the white heat and formidable presence of one of the Premier League’s most feared football executives.

In truth, this entire bruising episode appears to portray the director in a different perspective. It may have been easy, given his nine months of experience at Southampton, to view him as merely a functionary within the club's structure: a man who owed his position largely to his friendship with his former boss a fellow executive rather than any verifiable talent. How wrong everyone was. By masterfully outsmarting United’s feted head coach, just as he bested the unfortunate a previous executive before him, he has demonstrated to be among the sport’s strategic masterminds: a tactical intellect that United’s mid-table rivals are now rightly wary.

A Tactical Conflict Regarding Formation & Philosophy

To illustrate, this was the director , after having been part of the leadership that hired the rigid 3-4-3 advocate the coach in the first place, was instrumental in trying to persuade him to ditch his beloved formation. Unsurprisingly, these entreaties met a certain resistance. However, these judgements carry more weight when issued by a man with the impeccable football pedigree of Jason Wilcox, a veteran of three England caps and a contributor to a title-winning side decades past.

Perhaps in time Jason Wilcox might agree to explain his thought processes publicly. Perhaps at some point questions may arise regarding why the coach is departing with a full payout, without any compensation reduction clause activated. But Jason Wilcox speaks rarely publicly, and with very good reason. The true intellectuals in football – men like Jason Wilcox – simply operate on a plane exceeding our prosaic understanding. Were he to speak, probably all we would hear would be high-frequency signals and four-dimensional whirring. Desiring an explanation is not the same as being ready to comprehend it.

An Ultimate Power In Command

Naturally, in training our focus on Jason Wilcox we are obscuring the real power behind the club's current leadership. Jason Wilcox is, in reality, simply carrying out the commands of his ultimate superior Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who privately has made very clear his desire for a back four. It is reported, Ratcliffe 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 declared that United’s style to football “shall be determined in this room”.

Ultimately, Sir Jim is a specialist in these intricate football matters, drawing from his background in petrochemicals and yachting. Most importantly he is immensely wealthy, and it is known, the wealthy are superior: more insightful, more wise, more tactically astute, simply superior. Who else would you trust to manage a strategic plan of cost-cutting, the construction of a modern arena that appears a lot like someone’s leftover knitting, the acquisition of Benjamin Sesko?

A Modern Football Hierarchy: Executives Above Managers

This represents a shift we are increasingly seeing in top-tier football. For decades, clubs foolishly delegated major sporting choices to subordinate staff like managers, scouts – players themselves. Maybe previously possible for a young, visionary coach with ideas and energy to join a club and implement their plan through to completion. But how many businesses have such individuals set up? What number of large-scale layoffs have they overseen? Better by far to place the real power where it belongs: the executive class, the casually dressed executives, the guys with impressive LinkedIn profiles. It is wiser to determine the strategy by the directors and hire a coach who can tailor their offering to suit. If managers were formerly chefs, they are now more like Deliveroo drivers: not really responsible for the food, but still ultimately answerable should it be delivered cold or leaks out to meet standards.

Nowadays, a coach's role is increasingly not about defining the vision and more about marketing it: the front-facing representative of the operation, the visible figurehead for a club they can do little to change. A coach at Chelsea leads a team of literal children into Europe and wins two medium-sized trophies, and effectively is dismissed for speaking out. Wilfried Nancy sees his standing damaged while the people who appointed him live to blunder another day.

A Neoliberal Game: Accountability Only for the Few

And possibly in a small way this is simply corporate governance at work: the elevation of a gilded elite who can never be wrong, whose choices are always untouchable, whose errors can invariably be resolved by sacking without justification. Hire the system coach only to dismiss them for playing excessively 3-4-3. Hire the process guy and later discard him for taking too long. And above all be grateful; for the incremental increases in ticket costs, for the latest player acquisitions, for the reality that the adults – regardless of their expertise – are in charge.