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Imagine the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Now, place it with a dejected Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed a sitter. Don't bother locating a real picture of him missing; context is the enemy. Then, add statistics in a big, comical font. Remember some emoticons. Share it everywhere.

Would you point out that Højlund's goal count includes scores in the Champions League while Sesko isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. And would you note that four of the Dane's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that his national team is much stronger to Slovenia and generates far more chances. If you manage online for a major brand, pure engagement is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

So the cycle of online material spins. Your next task is to scan a lengthy interview featuring Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where he qualifies his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. Nobody needs that. Simply make sure "weird" and "Sesko" appear together in the title. People will be outraged.

This Time of Promise and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my preferred periods to observe football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are still fresh, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the season ahead are staking their claims. The transfer window is closed. No one is talking about the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are in contention. Right now, anything is possible.

Yet, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. For while no outcomes are decided, 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 right now? Please an answer immediately.

The Player as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The need to withhold definitive judgment, allowing layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to develop. And the imperative to produce permanent verdicts, a constant stream of opinions and memes, out-of-context condemnations and pointless comparisons, a square that can never truly be solved.

I do not propose to offer a substantive evaluation of Sesko's stint at United so far. The guy has started on four occasions in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and had a mere of 116 touches. What precisely are we evaluating? Nor will I attempt to replicate the pundits' notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel passionately on a podcast over whether he needs ten strikes to be a success this year (one pundit), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at his former club: a big, screeching racing car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: afforded 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 right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most pitiless gap between the time and air he requires, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

There was a case of this over the international break, when a widely shared infographic handily stated that Sesko had been deemed – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a poll of football representatives. And of course, the press are not the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: all parties with skin in the game is now basically aligned along the same principles, an environment explicitly geared for controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to ourselves? Are we aware, on some level, what this endless sluice of irritation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the center of this, knowing on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that every single thing about players is now essentially content, product, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

And yes, in part this is because United are United, the entity that keeps nourishing the narrative, a major institution that must always be producing the big feelings. However, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of judgment most visibly and cruelly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been desiring players, praising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those same players are already being dismissed as broken goods. Is it time to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? 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 Sunday: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at home in the league and yet in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like filing a missing person’s report on someone who went to the shops 30 minutes ago. Too open. Their star past his prime. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. The coach losing his hair.

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 repivoted around talking points and reaction, an activity that happens in the backdrop while we browse through our devices, incapable to detach from the constant flow of opinions and more takes. Perhaps this player taking the hit at present. But in a way, we're all sacrificing something here.