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Picture this: a smiling Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Next, place that with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, appearing like he's missed an open goal. Don't bother locating an actual photo of that miss; background information is your adversary. Now, add some goal stats in a large, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Share the image across all platforms.

Would you point out that Højlund's goal count features scores in the premier European competition while Sesko does not compete in Europe? Certainly not. And would you note that four of Højlund's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and creates far more chances. If you manage online for a major brand, pure interaction is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and context is your sworn enemy.

So the cycle of content spins. The next job is to sift through a lengthy podcast featuring Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where he prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. No one needs that. Simply ensure "strange" and "Sesko" appear together in the title. People will be outraged.

This Time of Promise and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my preferred periods to watch football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, squads and strategies are still fresh, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the coming months are planting their flags. The summer market is closed. No one is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. All teams are still in the game. At this precise point, all is possibility.

However, for similar reasons, this period has also been one of my most disliked times to read about football. For while no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is reborn. The German talent has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? Please a decision now.

The Player as The Prime Example

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The need to withhold definitive judgment, to let layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to mature. And the demand to produce instant definitive judgment, a constant stream of takes and memes, out-of-context criticisms and meaningless comparisons, a square that can never truly be circled.

I do not propose to provide a substantive evaluation of Sesko's stint at United to date. The guy has been in the lineup four times in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and had a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we evaluating? Nor will I attempt to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts duel passionately on a popular show over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this year (Neville), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching him at Leipzig: a powerful, screeching racing car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: given the license to rampage but also the freedom to fail. And in part this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in about the time it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most ruthless gap between the patience and space he requires, and the time and air he is going to get.

We saw an example of this during the international break, when a widely shared chart conveniently stated that Sesko had been deemed – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the recent market by a poll of football representatives. Naturally, the press are not alone in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with a vested interest is now basically operating along the identical rules, an ecosystem explicitly geared for provocation.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? Do we realize, on any level, what this infinite stream of aggravation is doing to our minds? Separate from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the middle of this, aware on some surreal chain-reaction level that every single thing about them is now essentially material, product, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

And yes, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that continues to feed the narrative, a big club that must constantly be producing the big feelings. However, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of judgment most visibly and harshly observed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been coveting footballers, praising them, salivating over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, a lot of those same players are now being disdained as failures. Is it time to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that Sesko meets Liverpool on Sunday: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the league and somehow in their own state of perceived turmoil, like submitting a missing person’s report on a person who popped to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Their star finished. The striker an expensive flop. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football itself, to inflect the way we watch it, an whole competition reoriented around talking points and reaction, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we scroll through our devices, unable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. Perhaps this player taking the hit right now. But in a way, we're all losing a part of the experience here.