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Picture this: a happy Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Now, place that with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, appearing like he just missed an open goal. Don't worry locating a real picture of him missing; background information is the enemy. Now, add some goal stats in a big, silly font. Remember the emojis. Share it across all platforms.

Will you point out that Højlund's goal count includes strikes in the Champions League while his counterpart does not compete in Europe? Of course not. And would you note that four of the Dane's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and generates far more scoring opportunities. You manage online for a large outlet, raw interaction is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the prime target, and context is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of online material turns. Your next task is to scan a lengthy interview with Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". Just before, where he qualifies his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. No one wants that. Just ensure "strange" and "Sesko" appear together in the headline. The audience will be furious.

This Time of Potential and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my favourite times to watch football. Leaves fall, winds shift, squads and strategies are still fresh, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the coming months are staking their claims. The transfer window is closed. Nobody is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. All teams are still in the game. At this precise point, anything is possible.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. Because although no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league right now? Please an answer now.

Sesko as Patient Zero

In many ways, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player caught between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to delay definitive judgment, to let technical development and strategic understanding to mature. And the imperative to generate permanent definitive judgment, a constant stream of takes and jokes, context-free condemnations and pointless contrasts, a puzzle that can not truly be solved.

I do not propose to provide a substantive analysis of Sesko's time at Manchester United to date. The guy has started four times in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and taken a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we analysing? And will I attempt to duplicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits argue thrillingly on a podcast over whether he needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this season (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I enjoyed watching him at his former club: a powerful, fast racing car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: afforded the license to rampage but also the leeway to fail. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in about the time it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most pitiless gap between the patience and space he needs, and the time and air he is going to get.

There was an example of this during the national team pause, when a viral infographic handily stated that the player had been deemed – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a survey of 20 agents. And of course, the press are not alone in this. Team social media, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with a vested interest is now basically operating along the same principles, an environment explicitly nosed towards provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to ourselves? Do we realize, on any 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, knowing on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that every single thing about players is now essentially material, product, public property to be repackaged and exchanged.

Indeed, partly this is because United are United, the entity that continues to feed the cycle, a big club that must always be generating the big feelings. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, a swing of opinion most clearly and cruelly observed at this season, about a month after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been desiring footballers, eulogising them, drooling over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are already being disdained as failures. Is it time to be concerned about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need their striker necessary? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that Sesko meets Liverpool on the weekend: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the Premier League and somehow in their own situation of feverish crisis, like submitting a missing person’s report on someone who went to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah finished. The striker an expensive flop. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to influence the way we watch it, an entire sport reoriented around talking points and immediate responses, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we browse through our devices, unable to detach from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. It may be this player taking the hit at present. However, everyone is sacrificing something in this process.