The Coach's Fatal Error? Challenging Wilcox and the Infallible Executive Tier

Transpired he endured a loss to lower-league opposition. He weathered an important European final versus one of the worst Tottenham teams in living memory. He could survive home defeats against domestic rivals, a lowly league position, the tactical inflexibility, squandering some of the club’s best homegrown talent, the 32% win rate, calling his team the poorest the club has ever seen. But there was one adversary against whom Ruben Amorim was not permitted to engage. You come at the sporting director, you had better succeed.

And frankly, this entire painful saga appears to portray the director in a whole new light. It may have been tempting, based on his brief stint of experience at Southampton, to regard him as little more than a drudge within the club's structure: an individual who owed his position as much to his friendship with ex-colleague a fellow executive rather than any demonstrable skill. How mistaken everyone was. In brilliantly outmanoeuvring United’s feted head coach, just as he bested the unfortunate Dan Ashworth before him, Jason Wilcox has demonstrated as one of football's strategic masterminds: a strategic mind of which the club's mid-table rivals are now justifiably concerned.

The Strategic Clash Regarding System & Philosophy

For example, it was the director who having been part of the hierarchy that hired the 3-4-3 fundamentalist Amorim originally, was instrumental in attempting to convince Amorim to abandon his favored formation. Naturally, these pleas faced pushback. However, these judgements hold greater authority when delivered by a man with the impeccable football pedigree he possesses, a veteran of three England caps and a contributor to a title-winning side decades past.

Maybe eventually he may be persuaded to outline his thought processes to the rest of us. Maybe one day he might be asked why Amorim is departing with full compensation, without any penalty clause in place. But Jason Wilcox speaks rarely in public, for excellent reasons. The real thinkers of this sport – men like him – function on a plane beyond our own mundane comprehension. Were he to speak, most likely we would perceive is a series of high-frequency signals and four-dimensional whirring. Desiring an explanation is not the same as being prepared to receive.

An Ultimate Power In Command

But of course, in training our focus on the sporting director we overlook the real power behind the club's current leadership. Jason Wilcox is, after all, simply carrying out the commands of his line manager the billionaire owner, who in private has emphasized his desire for a four-man defense. It is reported, Ratcliffe has also proposed playing Bryan Mbeumo in a wing-back role. The owner is eager for the club to embrace analytics and analytics. According to ESPN, in an executive meeting soon after his investment, he announced that United’s style to football “shall be decided in this room”.

After all, Ratcliffe is a specialist in these intricate footballing stuff, leveraging his previous experience in industry and yachting. Most importantly he is immensely wealthy, and it is known, the wealthy are superior: more perceptive, more wise, strategically brilliant, simply superior. Whom else would you trust to oversee a strategic plan of austerity, the construction of a new stadium that looks a lot like an abstract design, the signing of Benjamin Sesko?

A New Football Order: Directors Over Managers

This is a trend that is becoming prevalent in top-tier football. Historically, clubs foolishly delegated big footballing decisions to low-level employees such as coaches, talent spotters – players themselves. Maybe previously possible for a young, innovative manager with a philosophy and drive to go into a club and see their vision supported to fruition. But how many businesses have such individuals established? How many mass redundancies have they managed? Better by far to invest the real power where it belongs: the leadership tier, the casually dressed executives, the guys with impressive LinkedIn profiles. It is wiser to determine the strategy in the boardroom and hire a coach who can tailor their methods to suit. If coaches were once chefs, they are now more akin to delivery personnel: not creating the food, but still finally accountable should it be delivered poorly or leaks out of the box.

Nowadays, a coach's role has become not about crafting the philosophy and more about marketing it: the front-facing representative on the front desk, the public face of an organisation they have minimal power to change. A coach at Chelsea leads a team of very young players into Europe and secures domestic cups, and effectively gets sacked for speaking out. A manager at Celtic finds his reputation ruined while the people who hired him continue to make errors indefinitely.

The Neoliberal Football: Accountability Only for the Few

And perhaps in a small way this represents neoliberalism at work: the rise of a gilded elite who can never be wrong, whose decisions are always untouchable, whose errors can invariably be resolved by sacking without explanation. Appoint the 3-4-3 coach only to dismiss him for playing too much that system. Hire the project manager and later bin them for taking excessive time. And above all show gratitude; for the incremental increases in ticket costs, for the latest player acquisitions, for the fact that the adults – however well qualified – are in charge.