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Transpired he was able to withstand a loss to lower-league opposition. Survive a decisive European final versus a particularly poor Spurs sides in living memory. He withstood home defeats to West Ham and Wolves, a lowly league position, his rigid approach, squandering the team's best academy products, a poor winning percentage, calling the squad the worst the club has ever seen. Yet, there existed a single opponent against whom Ruben Amorim would not be allowed to tango. If you challenge Jason Wilcox, and you best not miss.

Unfortunately, similar to numerous top-flight right-back in Blackburn’s championship 1994-95 season, Amorim took on the executive and appears to have missed. The most distracted of readers can see the paradoxical situation: a manager who often railed at his players for losing individual battles crumbling when confronted by the intense pressure and formidable presence of a England's top division's most feared football executives.

And frankly, this entire painful saga seems to paint Jason Wilcox in a whole new light. It may have been easy, based on his brief stint of experience with the Saints, to regard him as little more than a drudge within the club's structure: a man whose appointment was due as much to his close relationship with his former boss a fellow executive as any demonstrable skill. How mistaken everyone was. By masterfully outmanoeuvring the club's celebrated head coach, as he outmanoeuvred the hapless Dan Ashworth earlier, Jason Wilcox has proved himself as one of the sport’s strategic masterminds: a tactical intellect of which the club's competitors are now justifiably concerned.

The Strategic Clash Over Formation & Philosophy

For example, this was Jason Wilcox , after 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 abandon his beloved formation. Naturally, these entreaties were resisted. But perhaps such directives hold greater authority when issued from the mouth with the unimpeachable soccer background of Jason Wilcox, holder of international appearances and a contributor to a championship team decades past.

Maybe eventually he might agree to outline his reasoning publicly. Maybe one day questions may arise regarding why the coach is walking away with full compensation, with no compensation reduction clause activated. The director seldom speaks in public, for excellent reasons. The real thinkers in football – men like Jason Wilcox – simply operate at a level beyond our own prosaic understanding. If he ever did speak, probably we would perceive would be ultrasonic blips and four-dimensional whirring. Desiring an explanation is not quite equivalent to being prepared to comprehend it.

The Ultimate Power Behind Command

But of course, 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 line manager the billionaire owner, who in private has emphasized his preference for a four-man defense. According to reports, Ratcliffe has also proposed playing Bryan Mbeumo in a wing-back role. Ratcliffe is keen for United to embrace data science and metrics. Per reports, in an executive meeting soon after his minority ownership, he announced that United’s style to football “will be decided in this room”.

After all, Sir Jim is a specialist in this technical footballing stuff, leveraging his background in petrochemicals and yachting. Above all he remains incredibly rich, and as we all know, the rich are superior: more insightful, more wise, strategically brilliant, fundamentally better. Whom else could one trust to oversee an enlightened programme of austerity, the construction of a modern arena that looks a lot like an abstract design, the acquisition of a new striker?

A New Football Order: Executives Above Coaches

This is a trend that is becoming prevalent at the elite levels of the game. For decades, teams mistakenly delegated major sporting choices to subordinate staff like managers, scouts – players themselves. Maybe previously possible for an up-and-coming, innovative manager with a philosophy and drive to join a club and implement their plan supported to fruition. But how many businesses have these guys set up? How many mass redundancies have they managed? Better by far to place the real power where it rightly belongs: the leadership tier, the casually dressed executives, the guys with impressive LinkedIn profiles. It is wiser to decide the tactics by the directors and appoint someone who can tailor their methods to suit. If managers were once chefs, they are now more akin to delivery personnel: not responsible for the product, but still finally accountable if it arrives cold or leaks out to meet standards.

In the meantime, their job is increasingly less about crafting the philosophy and more about marketing it: the receptionist on the front desk, the public face of an organisation they have minimal power to influence. Enzo Maresca takes a squad of very young players into Europe and wins two medium-sized trophies, and effectively gets sacked for talking. A manager at Celtic finds his standing damaged while those individuals who hired him live to blunder indefinitely.

A Modern Corporate Game: Responsibility for the Few

And possibly in a small way this is simply corporate governance in action: the rise of a privileged elite who can never be wrong, whose decisions are always sacrosanct, whose errors can always be sacked away without justification. Appoint the system coach only to dismiss them for playing too much that system. Bring in the project manager and later discard him for requiring too long. And most importantly be grateful; for your modest season ticket price rises, for the latest player acquisitions, for the reality that the adults – however well qualified – are in charge.