🔗 Share this article

Turns out he could survive losing against lower-league opposition. Survive an important European final against one of the worst Tottenham teams for many years. He could survive losing at home to West Ham and Wolves, a lowly league position, the tactical inflexibility, laying waste to some of the club’s most promising homegrown talent, a poor winning percentage, labeling his team the poorest in Manchester United history. But there was a single opponent against whom Ruben Amorim would not be allowed to tango. If you challenge Jason Wilcox, and you best not miss.

Unfortunately, like many a Premiership defender in Blackburn’s championship campaign, Amorim took on Jason Wilcox and appears to have failed. The most casual observer can see the irony here: a manager who frequently berated at his players for losing one-on-one duels succumbing in the face of the white heat and formidable presence of a the Premier League’s most intimidating sporting directors.

In truth, this whole painful saga appears to portray the director in a different perspective. Perhaps it might have been easy, given his brief stint of experience with the Saints, to view him as merely a functionary within the club's structure: an individual who owed his position largely to his friendship with ex-colleague Omar Berrada rather than any demonstrable skill. How mistaken we all were. By masterfully outsmarting the club's celebrated head coach, just as he bested the unfortunate a previous executive before him, Jason Wilcox has demonstrated as one of football's true generals: a strategic mind that the club's mid-table rivals are now rightly wary.

The Tactical Conflict Regarding Formation & Ideology

For example, it was Jason Wilcox , after being involved in the hierarchy that appointed the rigid 3-4-3 advocate the coach in the first place, played a key role in attempting to convince Amorim to abandon his favored formation. Naturally, these pleas were resisted. But perhaps such directives hold greater authority when delivered from the mouth with the impeccable football pedigree of Jason Wilcox, a veteran of three England caps and a role in a championship team decades past.

Maybe eventually he might agree to outline his reasoning publicly. Perhaps at some point questions may arise why Amorim is departing with a full payout, without any compensation reduction clause in place. But Jason Wilcox seldom speaks publicly, for excellent reasons. The true intellectuals of this sport – men like Jason Wilcox – simply operate on a plane beyond our own mundane comprehension. If he ever did speak, probably we would perceive would be ultrasonic blips and four-dimensional whirring. Desiring an explanation is not the same as being prepared to receive.

The Ultimate Authority In the Throne

But of course, in training our focus on Jason Wilcox we overlook the true genius behind the club's current leadership. The director is, in reality, merely executing the commands of his ultimate line manager the billionaire owner, who privately has made very clear his preference for a four-man defense. It is reported, the owner has also suggested deploying the forward as a right wing-back. The owner is eager for United to adopt data science and metrics. Per reports, in an executive meeting early in his minority ownership, he declared that the team's approach to football “shall be determined in this room”.

Ultimately, Sir Jim is a specialist in these intricate footballing stuff, leveraging his previous experience in petrochemicals and sailing. Above all he remains immensely wealthy, and as we all know, the wealthy are superior: more perceptive, sagacious, more tactically astute, simply better. Who else would you trust to manage a strategic plan of austerity, the building of a modern arena that appears similar to an abstract design, the signing of Benjamin Sesko?

A New Football Hierarchy: Directors Above Coaches

This is a trend that is becoming prevalent in top-tier football. For decades, clubs foolishly entrusted big footballing decisions to subordinate staff such as coaches, scouts – players themselves. Maybe previously feasible for an up-and-coming, innovative manager with ideas and drive to join an organization and see their vision through to completion. But how many businesses have these guys established? What number of mass redundancies have they managed? Far preferable to invest the real power where it rightly belongs: the executive class, the open-necked shirt brigade, the guys with impressive LinkedIn profiles. It is wiser to decide the tactics in the boardroom and appoint someone who will adapt their offering to suit. If managers were once chefs, they have become more like delivery personnel: not really responsible for the food, yet ultimately answerable should it be delivered cold or leaks out of the box.

In the meantime, their job is increasingly not about defining the vision and more about marketing it: the receptionist of the operation, the visible figurehead for a club they have minimal power to change. A coach at Chelsea leads a team of literal children into the Champions League and secures domestic cups, and essentially is dismissed for talking. A manager at Celtic finds his standing damaged whereas the people who appointed him live to blunder another day.

The Neoliberal Game: Accountability for the Few

And possibly on some microcosmic level this is simply corporate governance in action: the rise of a gilded elite who are infallible, whose choices remain untouchable, whose errors can invariably be sacked away without justification. Hire the 3-4-3 coach and then fire them for playing excessively 3-4-3. Hire the project manager and then bin them for taking excessive time. And most importantly be grateful; for your modest increases in ticket costs, for your new player acquisitions, for the reality that the grownups – however well qualified – remain in control.