🔗 Share this article

Turns out the manager could survive defeat by Grimsby. Survive a decisive continental showpiece against one of the worst Tottenham teams for many years. He withstood losing at home against domestic rivals, finishing 15th, an unwavering system, squandering some of the club’s best homegrown talent, the 32% win rate, labeling his team the poorest the club has ever seen. Yet, there existed a single opponent with whom Ruben Amorim was not permitted to dance. If you challenge the sporting director, you had better succeed.

Unfortunately, similar to numerous Premiership defender during Blackburn Rovers' title-winning campaign, the coach took on the executive and seems to have missed. The most distracted of readers can see the irony here: a manager who often railed his squad for losing one-on-one duels succumbing in the face of the intense pressure and formidable presence of a the Premier League’s most feared sporting directors.

And frankly, this whole bruising episode 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: a man who owed his position largely to his close relationship with his former boss a fellow executive as any verifiable talent. How wrong everyone was. In brilliantly outsmarting the club's celebrated manager, just as he bested the unfortunate a previous executive before him, he has proved himself as one of football's strategic masterminds: a strategic mind that the club's mid-table rivals are now rightly wary.

The Tactical Clash Regarding Formation and Philosophy

To illustrate, it was Jason Wilcox , after having been part of the leadership that hired the rigid 3-4-3 advocate Amorim in the first place, played a key role in attempting to convince him to abandon his beloved 3-4-3. Unsurprisingly, these entreaties were resisted. However, such directives hold greater authority when delivered from the mouth of a man the unimpeachable soccer background of Jason Wilcox, holder of three England caps and a contributor to a title-winning side decades past.

Maybe eventually Jason Wilcox may be persuaded to outline his reasoning to the rest of us. Perhaps at some point he might be asked regarding why the coach is departing with full compensation, without any compensation reduction clause activated. The director speaks rarely publicly, for excellent reasons. The real thinkers in football – men like Jason Wilcox – function on a plane exceeding our prosaic understanding. If he ever did speak, most likely all we would hear would be high-frequency signals and complex calculations. Wanting is not quite equivalent to being prepared to receive.

An Ultimate Power Behind the Throne

Naturally, in training our focus on Jason Wilcox we are obscuring the real power behind the club's current leadership. Jason Wilcox is, after all, merely executing the commands of his ultimate superior Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who privately has made very clear his preference for a back four. It is reported, the owner has also suggested playing Bryan Mbeumo in a wing-back role. Ratcliffe is keen for the club to adopt data science and analytics. According to ESPN, in an executive meeting early in his investment, he announced that the team's approach to football “shall be decided by this group”.

After all, Sir Jim is a specialist in these intricate footballing stuff, drawing from his previous experience in petrochemicals and yachting. Most importantly he remains immensely wealthy, and as we all know, the rich are superior: more perceptive, sagacious, strategically brilliant, fundamentally better. Whom else would you trust to manage a strategic plan of austerity, the building of a modern arena that appears similar to someone’s leftover knitting, the acquisition of Benjamin Sesko?

The New Football Order: Directors Above Managers

This is a trend that is becoming prevalent at the elite levels of the game. For decades, teams mistakenly delegated big footballing decisions to subordinate staff such as coaches, talent spotters – even footballers. Maybe previously possible for an up-and-coming, innovative manager with a philosophy and drive to join an organization and implement their plan supported to fruition. But how many businesses have these guys set up? What number of large-scale layoffs have they overseen? Better by far to place genuine authority where it rightly belongs: the executive class, the casually dressed executives, the individuals with the jaw-dropping professional resumes. Better by far to decide the tactics in the boardroom and appoint a coach who will adapt their methods accordingly. If coaches were formerly chefs, they are now more akin to Deliveroo drivers: not really responsible for the food, yet finally accountable if it arrives poorly or fails of the box.

In the meantime, a coach's role is increasingly less about crafting the philosophy and more about marketing it: the receptionist of the operation, the visible figurehead of an organisation they have minimal power to change. Enzo Maresca leads a team of literal children into the Champions League and wins two medium-sized trophies, and effectively gets sacked for talking. Wilfried Nancy finds his reputation ruined whereas the people who appointed him live to blunder indefinitely.

A Neoliberal Game: Responsibility for the Few

And perhaps in a small way this represents corporate governance in action: the rise of a privileged overclass who can never be wrong, whose decisions are always untouchable, whose errors can always be resolved by sacking without explanation. Hire the system coach only to fire them for using too much that system. Bring in the process guy and then bin them for taking excessive time. And above all be grateful; for your modest increases in ticket costs, for the latest player acquisitions, for the fact that the adults – however well qualified – are in charge.