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Picture the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Now, juxtapose that with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he just missed a sitter. Do not worry locating an actual photo of that miss; context is the enemy. Now, add statistics in a big, comical font. Remember the emojis. Post it everywhere.

Would you mention that Højlund's goal count includes strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in Europe? Certainly not. And will you note that four of Højlund's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is much stronger to Slovenia and generates far more chances. If you manage online for a major brand, raw engagement is your livelihood, United are the biggest draw, and context is your sworn enemy.

So the cycle of online material spins. The next job is to scan a lengthy podcast 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, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. Nobody needs that. Simply make sure "strange" and "the player" appear together in the title. People will be outraged.

This Time of Potential and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my favourite times to observe football. Leaves fall, winds shift, squads and strategies are newly formed, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the season ahead are planting their flags. The transfer window is closed. No one is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are in contention. At this precise point, all is possibility.

However, for similar reasons, this period has long been one of my most disliked times to read about football. For while no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is reborn. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league right now? Please an answer now.

The Player as Patient Zero

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player caught between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The need to withhold definitive judgment, to let layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to mature. And the imperative to generate instant verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and memes, out-of-context criticisms and meaningless contrasts, a square that can never truly be solved.

I do not propose to provide a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's time at United to date. He has started on four occasions in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and taken a mere of 116 touches. What precisely are we analysing? Nor do I propose to duplicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits argue thrillingly on a popular show over whether he needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this season (Neville), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I loved watching Sesko at his former club: a powerful, fast racing car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: given the freedom to rampage but also the leeway to fail. Partly this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most pitiless gap between the patience and space he needs, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

There was a case of this during the national team pause, when a viral chart handily stated that Sesko had been deemed – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the recent market by a survey of football representatives. Naturally, the press are by no means alone in such behavior. Team social media, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: all parties with skin in the game is now basically aligned along the same principles, an environment explicitly nosed towards provocation.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to us? Are we aware, on any level, what this endless sluice of irritation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the middle of this, aware on some surreal butterfly-effect level that each aspect about them is now basically content, commodity, open-source property to be repackaged and traded.

And yes, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a big club that must constantly be producing the big feelings. However, in part this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of opinion most clearly and harshly glimpsed at this season, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been desiring footballers, eulogising them, drooling over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are already being dismissed as broken goods. Should we start to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need their striker necessary? What was the point of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that he meets Liverpool on the weekend: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at home in the Premier League and yet in their own state of perceived turmoil, like submitting a a report on someone who popped to the store half an hour ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah past his prime. Alexander Isak waste of money. The coach losing his hair.

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 reoriented around talking points and reaction, an activity that happens in the background while we browse through our devices, unable to detach from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. Perhaps this player taking the hit right now. However, we're all losing a part of the experience in this process.