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Imagine this: a happy Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Next, juxtapose that with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, looking as if he just missed a sitter. Don't worry finding a real picture of that miss; background information is the enemy. Now, add statistics in a big, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Post it everywhere.

Would you mention that Højlund's goal count includes strikes in the Champions League while his counterpart isn't playing in Europe? Certainly not. And would you note that several of Højlund's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is far superior to Slovenia and generates far more scoring opportunities. You run social media for a major brand, raw interaction is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

Thus the cycle of online material turns. Your next task is to scan a 44-minute podcast featuring the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". Just before, where Schmeichel qualifies his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. No one needs that. Simply make sure "weird" and "the player" are paired in the title. People will be furious.

This Time of Promise and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has long been one of my favourite periods to watch football. Leaves fall, winds shift, squads and strategies are newly formed, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the coming months are staking their claims. The summer market is closed. Nobody is talking about the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are in contention. Right now, anything is possible.

Yet, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. For while nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is resurgent. The German talent has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? Please an answer immediately.

The Player as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player caught between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The need to delay definitive judgment, allowing technical development and strategic understanding to mature. And the imperative to produce permanent definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, out-of-context condemnations and meaningless contrasts, a square that can not truly be circled.

It is not my aim to offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's time at Manchester United so far. He has started four times in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and taken a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we evaluating? Nor will I attempt to replicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits argue thrillingly on a popular show over whether he needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this year (one pundit), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I enjoyed watching Sesko at his former club: a big, fast sports car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: afforded the license to rampage but also the freedom to fail. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving 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 pitiless gulf between the patience and space he requires, and the time and air he is going to get.

We saw a case of this during the national team pause, when a viral chart conveniently stated that Sesko had been judged – decisively – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a survey of 20 agents. And of course, the press are by no means alone in this. Club channels, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of fake followers: everybody with a vested interest is now essentially operating along the identical rules, an environment deliberately geared for controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to ourselves? Are we aware, on some level, what this endless stream of aggravation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the center of it all, aware on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that every single thing about players is now basically material, commodity, open-source property to be repackaged and traded.

And yes, partly this is because United are United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a major institution that must always be generating the big feelings. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of opinion most visibly and cruelly observed at this season, about a month after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been coveting players, eulogising them, drooling 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 a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that Sesko meets their rivals on the weekend: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at home in the Premier League and yet in their own state of feverish crisis, like submitting a a report on a person who went to the shops 30 minutes ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah past his prime. The striker an expensive flop. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has started to replace football the actual game, to influence the way we watch it, an entire sport repivoted around discussion topics and immediate responses, an activity that happens in the backdrop while we scroll through our phones, incapable to disconnect from the constant flow of takes and further hot takes. It may be Sesko bearing the brunt at present. However, everyone is sacrificing something here.