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Picture the following: a happy Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Now, place that with a dejected Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he just missed a sitter. Do not bother finding an actual photo of that miss; background information is your adversary. Now, include statistics in a big, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Share it everywhere.

Will you mention that Højlund's tally features scores in the premier European competition while his counterpart does not compete in continental tournaments? Certainly not. And will you note that four of Højlund's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that his national team is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and generates many more scoring opportunities. You manage social media for a large outlet, pure interaction is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

Thus the cycle of content turns. The next job is to scan a 44-minute interview with Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where Schmeichel prefaces his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. Nobody wants that. Just ensure "weird" and "the player" appear together in the title. People will be furious.

The Season of Promise and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has long been one of my preferred periods to observe football. Leaves fall, winds shift, the teams and tactics are still fresh, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the coming months are planting their flags. The transfer window is shut. Nobody is talking about the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are in contention. Right now, anything is possible.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. For while nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league right now? We need a decision immediately.

Sesko as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The need to withhold final conclusions, allowing technical development and strategic understanding to mature. And the demand to generate permanent definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of opinions and memes, out-of-context condemnations and pointless comparisons, a puzzle that can not truly be circled.

I do not propose to provide a in-depth analysis of Sesko's time at United to date. The guy 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 analysing? And will I attempt to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel thrillingly on a popular show over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this season (Neville), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I enjoyed watching him at Leipzig: a powerful, screeching sports car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: afforded the license to rampage but also the freedom to miss. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down 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 time and air he is likely to receive.

We saw an example of this over the national team pause, when a widely shared infographic handily informed us that the player had been judged – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the recent market by a survey of 20 agents. Naturally, the press are not the only ones in such behavior. Club channels, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with skin in the game is now basically operating along the identical rules, an environment explicitly geared for controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to us? Do we realize, on some level, what this infinite stream of irritation is doing to our brains? Separate from the essential weirdness of being a player in the center of this, knowing on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that each aspect about them is now essentially content, product, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

And yes, partly this is because United are United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a big club that must constantly be generating the big feelings. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of judgment most visibly and cruelly observed at this time of year, about a month after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been coveting footballers, eulogising them, drooling over them. Now, only a handful of games later, a lot of those very players are already being disdained as broken goods. Is it time to worry about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker necessary? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that Sesko faces Liverpool on Sunday: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at home in the Premier League and yet in their own state of perceived turmoil, like submitting a a report on a person who went to the store half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah finished. The striker an expensive flop. Arne Slot bald.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football itself, to inflect the way we watch it, an whole competition repivoted around discussion topics and reaction, something that happens in the backdrop while we scroll through our phones, unable to detach from the saline drip of takes and more takes. Perhaps Sesko bearing the brunt at present. However, everyone is sacrificing a part of the experience here.