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Picture the following: a happy the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Next, juxtapose it with a dejected Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Don't bother locating a real picture of him missing; background information is the enemy. Now, include some goal stats in a big, comical font. Remember the emojis. Post it across all platforms.

Would you point out that Højlund's goal count includes strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in continental tournaments? Of course not. Nor will you note that four of Højlund's goals came against weaker national sides, or that his national team is far superior to Slovenia and generates far more scoring opportunities. If you run online for a major brand, raw engagement is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and context is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of content spins. Your next task is to scan a lengthy interview featuring the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "strange". Just before, where he qualifies his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. No one wants that. Simply ensure "strange" and "the player" appear together in the title. The audience will be furious.

This Time of Potential and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my favourite periods to observe football. Leaves fall, winds shift, the teams and tactics are newly formed, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the coming months are staking their claims. The summer market is closed. No one is talking about the quadruple yet. All teams are still in the game. At this precise point, all is possibility.

However, for similar reasons, this period has long been one of my least favourite times to read about football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is reborn. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league at this moment? Please an answer immediately.

The Player as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to delay definitive judgment, to let layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to develop. And the imperative to generate permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of opinions and memes, out-of-context condemnations and pointless contrasts, a square that can never truly be circled.

It is not my aim to offer a substantive evaluation of Sesko's stint at Manchester United so far. He has started four times in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and had a grand total of 116 touches. What precisely are we evaluating? And do I propose to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits argue thrillingly on a popular show over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be a success this year (one pundit), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I loved watching him at his former club: a big, fast racing car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: afforded the freedom to rampage but also the leeway to fail. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most ruthless gulf between the patience and space he needs, and the opportunity he is going to get.

There was a case of this over the national team pause, when a widely shared chart handily informed us that Sesko had been deemed – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a poll of 20 agents. And of course, the media are not the only ones in this. Team social media, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: all parties with skin in the game is now essentially operating along the same principles, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to ourselves? Do we realize, on any level, what this endless sluice of aggravation is doing to our brains? Separate from the essential weirdness of playing in the middle of this, knowing on some surreal butterfly-effect level that each aspect about them is now basically material, product, public property to be packaged and traded.

And yes, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a big club that must always be producing the big feelings. However, partly 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. All summer long we have been desiring players, eulogising them, salivating over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, many of those same players are already being dismissed as broken goods. Should we start to be concerned 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 Sesko faces Liverpool on the weekend: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the league and somehow in their own state of feverish crisis, like submitting a missing person’s report on a person who went to the shops 30 minutes ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah finished. The striker waste of money. Arne Slot bald.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football itself, to inflect the way we view it, an entire sport reoriented around talking points and reaction, something that occurs in the backdrop while we browse through our devices, incapable to disconnect from the constant flow of takes and more takes. Perhaps this player bearing the brunt at present. However, we're all sacrificing something in this process.