In Sir Alex Ferguson’s later years at Old Trafford, when his position in English football felt practically presidential, and a consoling call to Arsene Wenger could yield the signature of Arsenal’s best player, there was an argument the old boy was the greatest director of football ever.

There was the occasional difference to the conventional director role – Ferguson picked the team and he sat in the dugout although he had long since given up bothering to explain himself afterwards. Generally speaking he was the captain of the ship, making the major decisions on player recruitment, staff appointments and setting the culture of the club. He did not coach the players day-to-day but they were left in no doubt who decided their future.

It barely needs saying that it was a formidable reputation built over years, a great network of influence and contacts all over the European game that meant Ferguson could make deals happen by the sheer force of his personality. There were different rules for him, and one would struggle to find a director of football in the current day who would, for instance, delight in being quite so disparaging about certain leading agents. Many of them treasure it now, a giant badge of dishonour from the game’s most cantankerous soul.

Every club works differently but one might say that what United needed most when Ferguson left was not simply a manager, but a director of football. Yet then the Old Trafford managerial succession felt sacred, something that had to be passed on as if it were suffused with its own inherent power. Six years on and no-one believes that any longer. It can take a club a long time to recover from the kind of success that a manager like Ferguson brings them.

Whoever comes in now as the new man, whether it is Ferguson’s old training ground lieutenant Mike Phelan alongside his former prodigy Darren Fletcher, the dynamic will be impossible to recreate. The modern director of football (DOF) does not have time to fight all the battles that Ferguson once did, or make the mistakes from which he was once granted time to recover. The DOF occupies a strange territory: supporting the manager who picks the team while ensuring that, from the moment the manager arrives, there is a plan for the day he leaves.