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Tbecame clear he was able to withstand defeat by lower-league opposition. He weathered an important continental showpiece against a particularly poor Spurs sides in living memory. He withstood losing at home to domestic rivals, finishing 15th, his rigid approach, squandering some of the club’s best homegrown talent, the 32% win rate, labeling his team the poorest in Manchester United history. Yet, there existed a single opponent against whom the Portuguese coach was not permitted to dance. If you challenge Jason Wilcox, and you best not miss.

Unfortunately, similar to numerous top-flight right-back in Blackburn’s title-winning 1994-95 season, the coach took on the executive and appears to have missed. Even the most casual observer can see the paradoxical situation: a coach who frequently berated his squad for losing one-on-one duels succumbing in the face of the white heat and animal charisma of one of England's top division's most feared sporting directors.

And frankly, this whole painful saga seems to paint the director in a different perspective. It may have been easy, based on his nine months in a similar role at Southampton, to regard him as merely a functionary in the United exoskeleton: an individual whose appointment was due as much to his friendship with ex-colleague Omar Berrada as any verifiable talent. How mistaken we all were. By masterfully outmanoeuvring the club's celebrated manager, as he outmanoeuvred the hapless a previous executive earlier, he has demonstrated to be among football's strategic masterminds: a tactical intellect of which the club's mid-table rivals will now be rightly wary.

The Strategic Conflict Over System and Philosophy

To illustrate, this was the director who having been part of the hierarchy that appointed 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. Naturally, these pleas were resisted. But perhaps such directives carry more weight when issued by a man of a man the impeccable football pedigree he possesses, a veteran of international appearances and a role in a title-winning side decades past.

Maybe eventually he may be persuaded to outline his thought processes publicly. Maybe one day he might be asked regarding why the coach is walking away with a full payout, with no compensation reduction clause activated. The director speaks rarely in public, for excellent reasons. The true intellectuals in football – individuals such as Jason Wilcox – simply operate on a plane beyond our own mundane comprehension. If he ever did speak, probably all we would hear would be high-frequency signals and four-dimensional whirring. Desiring an explanation is not quite equivalent to being prepared to comprehend it.

The Supreme Power In Command

Naturally, in training our focus on the sporting director we are obscuring the real power behind the modern United throne. The director is, in reality, simply carrying out the directives of his ultimate line manager Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who in private has emphasized his preference for a four-man defense. According to reports, the owner has also suggested deploying the forward as a right wing-back. Ratcliffe is keen for the club to embrace analytics and analytics. Per reports, during a leadership summit soon after his investment, he declared that the team's approach to football “shall be determined by this group”.

After all, Sir Jim is a specialist in this technical football matters, leveraging his background in petrochemicals and sailing. Above all he is immensely wealthy, and as we all know, the wealthy are the best of us: more perceptive, sagacious, strategically brilliant, simply superior. Who else could one trust to oversee an enlightened programme of austerity, the construction of a modern arena that looks a lot like someone’s leftover knitting, the signing of a new striker?

The New Football Hierarchy: Directors Over Managers

This is a trend we are increasingly seeing at the elite levels of the game. For decades, clubs foolishly delegated big footballing decisions to low-level employees such as coaches, scouts – even footballers. Maybe previously 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 these guys established? How many large-scale layoffs have they managed? Better by far to place the real power where it rightly belongs: the executive class, the open-necked shirt brigade, the guys with the jaw-dropping professional resumes. Better by far to decide the tactics in the boardroom and appoint a coach who can tailor their methods to suit. If managers were once chefs, they have become more like Deliveroo drivers: not responsible for the product, yet finally accountable should it be delivered poorly or fails to meet standards.

Nowadays, a coach's role is increasingly not about crafting the philosophy and more about selling it: the receptionist on the front desk, the public face for a club they can do little to influence. Enzo Maresca leads a team of very young players into Europe and secures two medium-sized trophies, and essentially gets sacked for talking. Wilfried Nancy finds his reputation ruined while the people who appointed him live to blunder indefinitely.

A Neoliberal Game: Accountability for the Few

And perhaps on some microcosmic level this represents corporate governance at work: the elevation of a gilded elite who are infallible, whose decisions remain sacrosanct, whose errors can always be sacked away without explanation. Hire the system coach and then dismiss him for playing too much that system. Hire the project manager and later bin them for requiring excessive time. And above all be grateful; for the incremental increases in ticket costs, for the latest summer signings, for the reality that the grownups – however well qualified – remain in control.