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Imagine the following: a happy the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Now, place that with a dejected the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he's missed a sitter. Do not bother finding a real picture of him missing; background information is the enemy. Now, include some goal stats in a big, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Share it everywhere.

Would you mention that Højlund's goal count includes scores in the Champions League while his counterpart isn't playing in Europe? Certainly not. And will you highlight that several of Højlund's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that his national team is far superior to Slovenia and generates many more chances. You run social media for a major brand, pure engagement is what pays the bills, United are the biggest draw, and context is your sworn enemy.

Thus the cycle of online material spins. Your next task is to sift through a 44-minute podcast with Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he qualifies his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. No one wants that. Just ensure "strange" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. People will be outraged.

This Time of Promise and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my favourite periods to watch football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, squads and strategies are still fresh, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the coming months are planting their flags. The transfer window is shut. No one is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are in contention. At this precise point, all is possibility.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my most disliked times to read about football. For while nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is reborn. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league right now? We need an answer immediately.

Sesko as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player caught between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The need to delay final conclusions, allowing layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to produce instant verdicts, a constant stream of opinions and memes, out-of-context criticisms and meaningless contrasts, a square that can never truly be solved.

It is not my aim to offer a in-depth analysis of Sesko's stint at United to date. The guy has been in the lineup on four occasions in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and taken a mere of 116 touches. What precisely are we analysing? Nor do I propose to duplicate the pundits' notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts argue passionately on a popular show over whether he needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this year (Neville), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I enjoyed watching him at his former club: a powerful, screeching racing car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: 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 right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most ruthless gulf between the patience and space he requires, and the opportunity he is going to get.

We saw an example of this over the international break, when a widely shared chart handily informed us that Sesko had been judged – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the media are by no means the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of fake followers: all parties with a vested interest is now basically aligned along the same principles, an environment deliberately geared for controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? Do we realize, on some level, what this endless sluice of aggravation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of playing in the center of this, knowing on some surreal chain-reaction level that each aspect about players is now basically content, product, public property to be packaged and traded.

And yes, partly this is because United are United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the cycle, a major institution that must constantly be generating the strong emotions. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of opinion most visibly and harshly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been desiring footballers, praising them, drooling over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, many of those same players are already being disdained as failures. Should we start to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that he faces Liverpool on Sunday: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the league and somehow in their own state of perceived turmoil, like filing a a report on a person who went to the store 30 minutes ago. Too open. Their star finished. The striker waste of money. Arne Slot bald.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has started to replace football the actual game, to influence the way we watch it, an entire sport repivoted around talking points and immediate responses, an activity that happens in the backdrop while we scroll through our phones, incapable to detach from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit right now. However, everyone is losing a part of the experience in this process.