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Picture this: a happy Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Next, place it with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, appearing like he just missed an open goal. Don't worry locating an actual photo of that miss; background information is your adversary. Then, include statistics in a large, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Share the image across all platforms.

Will you mention that Højlund's goal count includes scores in the Champions League while his counterpart isn't playing in Europe? Certainly not. Nor would you note that four of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is much stronger to Slovenia and generates far more scoring opportunities. You run social media for a large outlet, raw engagement is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

Thus the wheel of online material turns. Your next task is to scan a 44-minute interview with the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "strange". Just before, where Schmeichel prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. No one wants that. Simply make sure "strange" and "Sesko" appear together in the headline. The audience will be outraged.

The Season of Promise and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my preferred times to watch football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are newly formed, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the coming months are planting their flags. The transfer window is closed. No one is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are still in the game. At this precise point, anything is possible.

However, for similar reasons, this period has long been one of my least favourite times to read about football. For while nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. The German talent has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league at this moment? Please a decision now.

The Player as The Prime Example

In many ways, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player caught between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to delay final conclusions, allowing layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to produce instant verdicts, a constant stream of opinions and memes, context-free condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a puzzle that can not truly be solved.

I do not propose to offer a in-depth analysis of Sesko's time at United to date. He has started on four occasions in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and had a mere of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? Nor do I propose to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts argue passionately on a popular show over whether he needs ten strikes to be a success this season (Neville), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I loved watching Sesko at his former club: a big, screeching sports car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: afforded the freedom to rampage but also the freedom to miss. And in part this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most ruthless gap between the patience and space he needs, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

There was a case of this over the international break, when a widely shared infographic handily informed us that Sesko had been judged – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. And of course, the press are by no means the only ones in such behavior. Club channels, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: all parties with skin in the game is now basically aligned along the identical rules, an ecosystem explicitly geared for controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? Do we realize, on some level, what this endless stream of aggravation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of being a player in the middle of it all, knowing on some surreal butterfly-effect level that every single thing about players is now essentially material, product, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

And yes, partly this is because United are United, the corpse that continues to feed the narrative, a big club that must constantly be generating the strong emotions. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of opinion most clearly and cruelly observed at this season, about a month after the window has closed. All summer long we have been coveting footballers, eulogising them, salivating over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, a lot of those same players are now being disdained as broken goods. Is it time to be concerned about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that Sesko faces Liverpool on the weekend: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at home in the league and yet in their own state of perceived turmoil, like submitting a a report on someone who went to the shops half an hour ago. Too open. Their star past his prime. The striker an expensive flop. Arne Slot bald.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has started to replace football the actual game, to influence the way we watch it, an entire sport repivoted around talking points and reaction, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we browse through our devices, incapable to detach from the saline drip of takes and further hot takes. Perhaps this player taking the hit right now. However, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.