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Imagine the following: a smiling the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Now, place that with a dejected the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, appearing like he's missed an open goal. Do not bother locating a real picture of that miss; context is the enemy. Now, include some goal stats in a big, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Post the image across all platforms.

Would you point out that Højlund's tally includes strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in continental tournaments? Of course not. And would you note that several of Højlund'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 major brand, raw interaction is your livelihood, Manchester United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

So the cycle of content spins. The next job is to sift through a 44-minute interview featuring the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where Schmeichel qualifies his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. Nobody wants that. Just make sure "weird" and "the player" appear together in the headline. People will be furious.

This Time of Promise and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has long been one of my favourite times to observe football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, squads and strategies are newly formed, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the coming months are planting their flags. The summer market is shut. Nobody is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are still in the game. Right now, anything is possible.

Yet, for similar reasons, this period has also been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league right now? We need a decision immediately.

The Player as Patient Zero

In many ways, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player caught between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The need to delay final conclusions, to let technical development and strategic understanding to mature. And the imperative to produce permanent verdicts, a constant stream of takes and jokes, out-of-context criticisms and meaningless comparisons, a square that can never truly be circled.

I do not propose to offer a substantive evaluation of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. The guy has been in the lineup four times in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and taken a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we analysing? And do I propose to replicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts argue thrillingly on a popular show over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be a success this year (one pundit), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at his former club: a big, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: given the license to attack but also the leeway to fail. And in part this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most pitiless gap between the patience and space he requires, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

We saw a case of this over the international break, when a viral infographic handily stated that the player had been judged – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a poll of football representatives. Naturally, the press are not the only ones in this. Team social media, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: everybody with skin in the game is now basically operating along the same principles, an environment deliberately geared for provocation.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to us? Do we realize, on some level, what this infinite sluice of irritation is doing to our brains? Separate from the inherent strangeness of playing in the center of it all, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about them is now basically material, commodity, public property to be repackaged and exchanged.

And yes, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the cycle, a big club that must constantly be generating the big feelings. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of judgment most visibly and cruelly glimpsed at this time of year, about a month after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been desiring footballers, eulogising them, drooling over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, many of those same players are now being disdained as broken goods. Should we start to worry about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that he meets their rivals on the weekend: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at home in the league and somehow in their own situation of feverish crisis, like submitting a a report on someone who went to the shops 30 minutes ago. Too open. Their star finished. The striker waste of money. The coach bald.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football itself, to inflect the way we watch it, an whole competition repivoted around discussion topics and reaction, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we browse through our phones, incapable to disconnect from the constant flow of takes and further hot takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit right now. However, everyone is sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.