Turns out he could survive losing against Grimsby. Survive losing a crucial European final against one of the worst Tottenham teams in living memory. He could survive losing at home against West Ham and Wolves, finishing 15th, the tactical inflexibility, laying waste to some of the club’s best homegrown talent, the 32% win rate, calling his team the worst in Manchester United history. But there was one adversary with whom Ruben Amorim would not be allowed to dance. You come at Jason Wilcox, and you best not miss.
Unfortunately, like many a Premiership right-back in Blackburn’s title-winning 1994‑95 season, Amorim came at Jason Wilcox and appears to have missed. Even the most distracted of readers will notice the irony here: a coach who often railed at his players for losing one-on-one duels crumbling in the face of the white heat and animal charisma of one of the Premier League’s most feared sporting directors.
Frankly this whole bruising episode seems to paint Jason Wilcox in a whole new light. Perhaps it might have been easy, based on his nine months of experience in a similar role at Southampton, to regard Jason Wilcox as little more than a drudge in the United exoskeleton: a man who owed his position as much to his friendship with his former boss Omar Berrada as any verifiable talent. How wrong we all were. In brilliantly outmanoeuvring United’s feted head coach, as he outmanoeuvred the hapless Dan Ashworth before him, Jason Wilcox has proved himself as one of the sport’s true generals: a strategic mind of which United’s mid-table rivals will now be rightly wary.
For example, it was Jason Wilcox who, having been part of the hierarchy that hired the 3-4-3 fundamentalist Amorim in the first place, was instrumental in trying to persuade Amorim to abandon his beloved 3-4-3. Naturally, these entreaties met a certain resistance. But perhaps these judgments carry more weight when delivered from the mouth of a man of the unimpeachable football pedigree of Jason Wilcox, a veteran of three England caps and a role in a title‑winning side from 31 years ago.
Perhaps in time Jason Wilcox may be persuaded to explain his thought processes to the rest of us. Perhaps at some point he might be asked why Amorim is walking away with a full payout, with no compensation reduction clause in place. But Jason Wilcox speaks rarely in public, and with very good reason. The real thinkers of this sport – men like Jason Wilcox – simply operate at a level beyond our own prosaic understanding. If he ever did speak, most likely all we would hear is a series of ultrasonic blips and four-dimensional whirring. Wanting is not quite the same as being ready to receive.
But of course, in training our focus on Jason Wilcox we are obscuring the true genius behind the modern United throne. Jason Wilcox is, after all, simply carrying out the commands of his ultimate line manager, Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who in private has made very clear his preference for a back four. According to reports, Ratcliffe has also proposed playing Bryan Mbeumo as a right wing-back. Ratcliffe is keen for United to embrace data science and analytics. According to ESPN, in an executive meeting early in his minority ownership, he announced that United’s style of play “will be determined in this room”.
After all, Sir Jim is an expert in this technical footballing stuff, drawing from his previous experience in petrochemicals and sailing. Above all he is incredibly rich and, as we all know, the rich are the best of us: more insightful, more wise, more tactically astute, simply superior. Who else would you trust to oversee an enlightened programme of cost-cutting, the construction of a new stadium that looks a lot like someone’s leftover knitting, the signing of Benjamin Sesko?
This is a trend we are increasingly seeing at the elite levels of the game. For decades clubs foolishly entrusted big footballing decisions to low-level employees like managers, scouts – even footballers. Perhaps it was once possible for a young, visionary coach with ideas and energy to go into a club and see their vision supported to fruition. But how many businesses have these guys set up? How many mass redundancies have they overseen? Better by far to invest the real power where it rightly belongs: the executive class, the open-necked shirt brigade, the guys with the jaw-dropping LinkedIn profiles. Better by far to determine the tactics in the boardroom and hire someone who can tailor their offering accordingly. If coaches were once chefs, they are now more akin to Deliveroo drivers: not really responsible for the food, but still ultimately answerable if it arrives cold or leaks out of the box.
In the meantime, their job has become less about defining the vision and more about selling it: the receptionist on the front desk, the public face of an organisation they can do little to influence. Enzo Maresca at Chelsea takes a squad of literal children into the Champions League and wins two medium-sized trophies, and essentially gets sacked for talking. Wilfried Nancy at Celtic sees his reputation ruined while the people who hired him live to blunder another day.
Perhaps on some microcosmic level this is simply neoliberalism in action: the elevation of a gilded overclass who can never be wrong, whose decisions are always sacrosanct, whose mistakes can always be sacked away without explanation. Hire the 3-4-3 coach and then dismiss him for playing too much 3-4-3. Hire the process guy and then bin him for taking too long. And above all be grateful; for your modest season ticket price rises, for your new summer signings, for the fact that the grownups – however well qualified – are in charge.
