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Picture this: a happy Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, place that with a dejected Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Don't bother finding a real picture of him missing; context is the enemy. Then, add some goal stats in a big, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Post the image everywhere.

Would you point out that Højlund's goal count features strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in continental tournaments? Of course not. Nor will you note that several of Højlund's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that Denmark is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and generates many more scoring opportunities. If you run online for a major brand, pure interaction is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the prime target, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

So the cycle of online material spins. Your next task is to sift through a lengthy podcast featuring Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he describes 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 "Sesko" are paired in the headline. People will be outraged.

The Season of Potential and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my preferred periods to watch football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, squads and strategies are newly formed, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the coming months are staking their claims. The transfer window is closed. No one is mentioning the quadruple yet. Everyone are still in the game. At this precise point, all is possibility.

However, for similar 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 resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league at this moment? Please an answer immediately.

Sesko as Patient Zero

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The need to withhold definitive judgment, to let technical development and tactical sophistication to mature. And the imperative to generate instant definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, out-of-context criticisms and meaningless comparisons, a puzzle that can not truly be circled.

I do not propose to provide a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's stint at United so far. He has been in the lineup four times in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and taken a grand total of 116 touches. What precisely are we evaluating? And will I attempt to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts argue passionately on a popular show over whether he needs ten strikes to be a success this year (one pundit), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching Sesko at Leipzig: a big, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: given the freedom to attack but also the freedom 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 handed down in roughly the duration it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most pitiless gap between the patience and space he requires, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

There was a case of this during the international break, when a viral chart conveniently informed us that the player had been deemed – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the media are not the only ones in such behavior. Club channels, influencers, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: all parties with skin in the game is now basically operating along the identical rules, an environment deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to ourselves? Do we realize, on some level, what this infinite stream of irritation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of being a player in the center of this, aware on some surreal chain-reaction level that every single thing about them is now essentially content, commodity, public property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, partly this is because United are United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the cycle, a major institution that must constantly be producing the big feelings. However, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of judgment most visibly and harshly observed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been coveting footballers, eulogising them, drooling over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, many of those very players are already being dismissed as broken goods. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that he faces their rivals on the weekend: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and somehow in their own situation of feverish crisis, like submitting a a report on a person who went to the store 30 minutes ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah finished. Alexander Isak waste of money. Arne Slot 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 view it, an whole competition reoriented around talking points and immediate responses, something that occurs in the backdrop while we browse through our devices, unable to detach from the saline drip of takes and more takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit at present. However, everyone is sacrificing something here.