Who would want to be Jason Wilcox right now?

After he was publicly called out by Lisandro Martinez, every Manchester United failure has become a Jason Wilcox failure, and yet he is the man in charge of guiding the good ship United back to the glory days.

With his permanently confused-looking face in the crosshairs, he’s been the subject of a number of opinion pieces over the last weeks but one of the most damning things to emerge features in The Athletic’s recent story.

Their Manchester United correspondent claims insiders at the club have revealed that Wilcox’s choice to replace Erik Ten Hag was Russell Martin. That’s the Russell Martin whose team is currently 10th in League One.

As to how he landed on that suggestion, Wilcox had worked with Martin at Southampton and was the man who appointed him to take over at St Mary’s. Martin was picked not for his results – he had few to boast about – but because he plays possession football. It is that dedication to his style that has Leicester 10th in a league they should win at a canter.

Wilcox at least had some sense that a man who had no Premier League experience on his CV was not an ideal choice at the time but apparently wanted to ‘keep an eye on in time’. Hopefully for all United fans, that ship has now sailed.

Martin’s time at Southampton is already overly romanticised. Yes, he did get them promoted but they were not one of the three best teams that season. Leicester, Ipswich and Leeds were all superior and Martin’s greatest achievement as a manager came as a result of a Leeds collapse more than his own work.

But Martin fits exactly into the Wilcox way of thinking – style over any kind of substance. Ruben Amorim and Martin are not too dissimilar in their approaches and both are stubborn in their sticking to that philosophy at all costs.

Compare then Martin to Dan Ashworth’s suggestion of Eddie Howe, a manager with experience in the Premier League who had shown tactical flexibility in first keeping Bournemouth up and then making Newcastle into Champions League qualifiers. Two years later and United look to be taking Ashworth’s advice on board.

Forget the managers, sacking Ashworth is probably the single biggest mistake INEOS have made since paying £1bn to become the most hated people in Manchester. Instead they have got Wilcox, a man who is 0/2 for choosing good Manchester United managers.

How can he then possibly be trusted to find the man who can save Manchester United? Not to mention that even when he does appoint them, Wilcox is happy to meddle.

“Jason knows what’s working, what’s not working in terms of how Ruben’s playing, his system, which players he’s picking, which players we are going to buy in the future. And Jason’s got views on all of those things,” Jim Ratcliffe admitted at the time, ignoring that it seems a terrible way to get the best out of a manager.

It’s why the idea of them appointing Antonio Conte seems farcical. Unless INEOS and Wilcox abandon their current fingers-in-all-the-pies philosophy, there’s no chance Conte goes there.

Wilcox is the modish member of the INEOS brain trust being blamed for the United mess; he may even lose his job, but as long as he’s the one making the decisions, United really have no hope. Russell bloody Martin indeed.