Iturns out Ruben Amorim was able to withstand defeat by Grimsby. Survive losing a crucial continental showpiece versus a particularly poor Spurs sides for many years. He could survive losing at home to West Ham and Wolves, finishing 15th, his rigid approach, laying waste to some of the club’s most promising academy products, the 32% win rate, calling his team the worst the club has ever seen. Yet, there existed a single opponent against whom Ruben Amorim was not permitted to engage. If you challenge the sporting director, you had better succeed.
Unfortunately, similar to numerous top-flight defender in Blackburn’s championship campaign, Amorim took on the executive and seems to have failed. The most distracted of readers can see the irony here: a coach who frequently berated his squad for failing in one-on-one duels succumbing in the face of the white heat and animal charisma of one of the Premier League’s most intimidating sporting directors.
In truth, this entire bruising episode seems to paint the director in a whole new light. Perhaps it might have been tempting, based on his brief stint in a similar role at Southampton, to regard Jason Wilcox as merely a functionary within the club's structure: an individual who owed his position as much to his close relationship with ex-colleague a fellow executive as any demonstrable skill. How wrong we all were. By masterfully outsmarting the club's celebrated manager, just as he bested the unfortunate Dan Ashworth before him, Jason Wilcox has demonstrated to be among football's strategic masterminds: a tactical intellect of which United’s mid-table rivals will now be rightly wary.
For example, it was Jason Wilcox , after having been part of the leadership that hired the rigid 3-4-3 advocate the coach in the first place, was instrumental in attempting to convince him to abandon his favored 3-4-3. Naturally, these entreaties faced pushback. However, these judgements hold greater authority when issued by a man of a man the unimpeachable football pedigree he possesses, holder of three England caps and a role in a championship team from 31 years ago.
Maybe eventually he might agree to outline his thought processes publicly. Perhaps at some point questions may arise regarding why the coach is walking away with a full payout, with no penalty clause activated. But Jason Wilcox speaks rarely in public, for excellent reasons. The true intellectuals of this sport – individuals such as him – simply operate on a plane beyond our own prosaic understanding. Were he to speak, probably we would perceive is a series of ultrasonic blips and four-dimensional whirring. Wanting is not the same as being prepared to comprehend it.
Naturally, by focusing our attention on Jason Wilcox we are obscuring the true genius behind the club's current leadership. Jason Wilcox is, in reality, simply carrying out the commands of his superior Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who in private has made very clear his desire for a back four. It is reported, the owner has also suggested deploying the forward as a right wing-back. The owner is eager for the club to adopt analytics and metrics. According to ESPN, during a leadership summit soon after his minority ownership, he announced that United’s style to football “will be determined in this room”.
After all, Ratcliffe is an expert in this technical football matters, leveraging his background in petrochemicals and yachting. Above all he remains immensely wealthy, and as we all know, the rich are the best of us: more perceptive, sagacious, more tactically astute, fundamentally superior. Whom else would you trust to manage an enlightened programme of austerity, the construction of a modern arena that looks similar to an abstract design, the acquisition of Benjamin Sesko?
This represents a shift we are increasingly seeing at the elite levels football. Historically, teams mistakenly entrusted major sporting choices to low-level employees such as coaches, scouts – even footballers. Perhaps it was once feasible for an up-and-coming, innovative manager with ideas and energy to join a club and see their vision supported to fruition. Yet how many companies have such individuals set up? How many mass redundancies have they managed? Far preferable to place the real power where it rightly belongs: the executive class, the open-necked shirt brigade, the individuals with the jaw-dropping professional resumes. It is wiser to decide the strategy in the boardroom and hire a coach who can tailor their methods to suit. If coaches were formerly chefs, they are now more like Deliveroo drivers: not really responsible for the product, yet finally accountable if it arrives poorly or leaks out to meet standards.
Nowadays, a coach's role has become less about defining the vision and more about selling it: the front-facing representative of the operation, the visible figurehead for a club they can do little to influence. A coach at Chelsea leads a team of very young players into Europe and wins two medium-sized trophies, and effectively is dismissed for talking. A manager at Celtic finds his reputation ruined while those individuals who hired him continue to make errors another day.
And possibly on some microcosmic level this represents neoliberalism at work: the elevation of a privileged elite who are infallible, whose decisions are always sacrosanct, whose errors can always be resolved by sacking without explanation. Hire the system coach only to fire him for using too much that system. Hire the process guy and then bin him for taking too long. And above all show gratitude; for your modest increases in ticket costs, for your new summer signings, for the fact that the grownups – however well qualified – are in charge.
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