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Picture the following: a happy Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, juxtapose it with a dejected the Slovenian forward 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. Now, include statistics in a big, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Share the image across all platforms.

Would you mention that Højlund's tally features strikes in the Champions League while Sesko does not compete in continental tournaments? Of course not. Nor will you note that several of the Dane's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is far superior to Slovenia and generates many more scoring opportunities. If you run social media for a major brand, pure engagement is your livelihood, United are the biggest draw, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of content turns. The next job is to scan a lengthy interview featuring the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where Schmeichel qualifies his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. No one needs that. Just make sure "strange" and "the player" are paired in the headline. People will be furious.

This Time of Potential and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has long been one of my favourite times to watch football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, squads and strategies are newly formed, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the coming months are planting their flags. The summer market is closed. No one is mentioning the quadruple yet. All teams are still in the game. At this precise point, all is possibility.

However, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. For while nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league at this moment? Please an answer now.

The Player as The Prime Example

In many ways, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player caught between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to withhold definitive judgment, allowing technical development and strategic understanding to develop. And the imperative to generate permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, out-of-context criticisms and pointless contrasts, a puzzle that can not truly be solved.

It is not my aim to offer a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's stint at Manchester United so far. The guy has been in the lineup on four occasions in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and taken a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we analysing? Nor will I attempt to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits argue passionately on a podcast over whether he needs ten strikes to be deemed successful 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 big, fast racing car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: afforded the freedom to rampage but also the freedom to fail. Partly this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most pitiless gap between the patience and space he requires, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

There was an example of this during the international break, when a viral chart conveniently stated that the player had been judged – decisively – the worst signing of the recent market by a survey of 20 agents. And of course, the press are not alone in this. Team social media, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of fake followers: everybody with a vested interest is now essentially operating along the identical rules, an environment deliberately nosed towards provocation.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to ourselves? Do we realize, on some level, what this infinite stream of irritation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the middle of this, aware on some surreal chain-reaction level that every single thing about them is now basically material, commodity, public property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a major institution that must constantly be producing the strong emotions. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of judgment most clearly and cruelly observed at this season, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been coveting players, praising them, drooling over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, a lot of those same players are already being dismissed as broken goods. Is it time to be concerned about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need their striker necessary? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that he meets Liverpool on the weekend: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the league and somehow in their own situation of feverish crisis, like submitting a a report on a person who went to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Their star finished. The striker waste of money. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has started to replace football the actual game, to inflect the way we view it, an whole competition reoriented around talking points and reaction, something that occurs in the backdrop while we scroll through our devices, incapable to detach from the saline drip of takes and further hot takes. It may be this player taking the hit at present. However, everyone is losing something here.