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Picture the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Now, place it with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, appearing like he's missed a sitter. Don't worry finding an actual photo of that miss; background information is the enemy. Then, include some goal stats in a big, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Post it everywhere.

Will you mention that Højlund's tally includes scores in the Champions League while his counterpart does not compete in Europe? Of course not. And will you highlight that several of Højlund's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is far superior to Slovenia and creates far more scoring opportunities. You manage online for a large outlet, pure engagement is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the prime target, and context is your sworn enemy.

Thus the cycle of content turns. The next job is to scan a lengthy podcast featuring the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "weird". Just before, where he prefaces his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. No one wants that. Simply make sure "weird" and "Sesko" appear together in the headline. The audience will be outraged.

This Time of Potential and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has long been one of my favourite times to watch football. Leaves fall, winds shift, the teams and tactics are newly formed, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the season ahead are planting their flags. The transfer window is closed. No one is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. All teams are in contention. Right now, all is possibility.

Yet, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my most disliked times to read about football. For while no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? Please a decision immediately.

Sesko as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to withhold final conclusions, to let technical development and tactical sophistication to develop. And the demand to generate permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of opinions and memes, context-free criticisms and pointless comparisons, a puzzle that can never truly be circled.

It is not my aim to offer a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's time at United to date. 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 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we evaluating? Nor will I attempt to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts argue thrillingly on a podcast over whether he needs ten strikes to be a success this season (one pundit), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I enjoyed watching him at his former club: a powerful, fast sports car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: given the freedom to attack but also the freedom to miss. And in part this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most pitiless gulf between the patience and space he needs, and the opportunity he is going to get.

There was a case of this during the international break, when a viral chart conveniently stated that Sesko had been judged – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the press are by no means the only ones in such behavior. Club channels, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of fake followers: everybody with skin in the game is now basically aligned along the same principles, an ecosystem deliberately geared for provocation.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to us? Do we realize, on some level, what this infinite stream of irritation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of playing in the middle of this, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about them is now basically content, commodity, open-source property to be packaged and exchanged.

Indeed, partly this is because United are United, the entity that continues to feed the cycle, a major institution that must constantly be generating the big feelings. But also, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of opinion most clearly and harshly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been desiring players, praising them, salivating over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, a lot of those same players are now being dismissed as broken goods. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker wise? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that Sesko meets their rivals on the weekend: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the league and yet in their own state of perceived turmoil, like submitting a a report on someone who popped to the shops half an hour ago. Too open. 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 begun to supplant football the actual game, to influence the way we view it, an entire sport repivoted around discussion topics and immediate responses, an activity that happens in the background while we browse through our phones, incapable to detach from the constant flow of opinions and further hot takes. Perhaps Sesko taking the hit at present. However, everyone is losing something here.