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Imagine the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, place it with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Don't bother finding an actual photo of that miss; context is your adversary. Then, include statistics in a large, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Share it across all platforms.

Would you mention that Højlund's goal count features strikes in the Champions League while Sesko isn't playing in Europe? Of course not. And will you note that four of the Dane's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that his national team is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and creates many more scoring opportunities. If you manage online for a large outlet, raw engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the prime target, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

So the wheel of content spins. Your next task is to sift through a 44-minute podcast featuring Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "weird". Just before, where Schmeichel prefaces his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. No one wants that. Simply ensure "weird" and "Sesko" appear together in the title. People will be furious.

This Time of Promise and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has long been one of my favourite periods 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 season ahead are staking their claims. The transfer window is closed. No one is talking about the quadruple yet. Everyone are in contention. At this precise point, all is possibility.

However, for many of the same reasons, this period has long been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. For while no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league at this moment? We need an answer now.

Sesko as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player caught between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The need to withhold final conclusions, allowing technical development and tactical sophistication to mature. And the demand to produce permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, context-free condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a square that can not truly be solved.

It is not my aim to provide a in-depth analysis of Sesko's time at United to date. The guy has started four times in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and had a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we analysing? Nor do I propose to duplicate the pundits' notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel passionately on a podcast over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this year (Neville), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching Sesko at his former club: a big, fast 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. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most ruthless gulf between the patience and space he requires, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

There was a case of this during the national team pause, when a widely shared chart handily informed us that Sesko had been deemed – decisively – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a poll of 20 agents. And of course, the press are by no means alone in this. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with skin in the game is now essentially operating along the identical rules, an ecosystem deliberately geared for controversy.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this endless sluice of aggravation is doing to our brains? Separate from the essential weirdness of being a player in the middle of this, aware on some surreal chain-reaction level that each aspect about players is now essentially content, commodity, public 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, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of judgment most clearly and cruelly observed at this season, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been desiring footballers, praising them, salivating over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, a lot of those same players are already being disdained as failures. Is it time to worry about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that Sesko meets Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten 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 half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah past his prime. Alexander Isak waste of money. Arne Slot bald.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has started to replace football itself, to influence the way we view it, an whole competition repivoted around talking points and reaction, an activity that occurs in the background while we scroll through our devices, unable to disconnect from the constant flow of opinions and more takes. Perhaps this player bearing the brunt right now. But in a way, everyone is losing a part of the experience in this process.