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Imagine the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, juxtapose it with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he's missed an open goal. Do not worry locating an actual photo of that miss; context is the enemy. Now, add some goal stats in a large, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Share the image across all platforms.

Will you mention that Højlund's goal count features scores in the Champions League while his counterpart isn't playing in continental tournaments? Of course not. And would you highlight that four of the Dane's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and creates far more chances. You manage online for a large outlet, raw interaction is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the prime target, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

Thus the cycle of content turns. Your next task is to scan a 44-minute podcast featuring Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where Schmeichel prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. No one wants that. Just ensure "strange" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. The audience will be outraged.

This Time of Promise and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my preferred periods to observe football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, squads and strategies are newly formed, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the coming months are staking their claims. The summer market is shut. No one is talking about the quadruple yet. Everyone are in contention. Right now, anything is possible.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. Because although no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league right now? We need an answer immediately.

The Player as The Prime Example

In many ways, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player caught between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to delay final conclusions, to let technical development and strategic understanding to develop. And the imperative to produce permanent verdicts, a constant stream of opinions and memes, context-free criticisms and meaningless contrasts, a puzzle that can not truly be circled.

It is not my aim to offer a substantive evaluation of Sesko's time at United so far. He has started four times in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and taken a grand total of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? Nor will I attempt to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts argue thrillingly on a podcast over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be a success this year (one pundit), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching him at Leipzig: a powerful, fast racing car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: afforded the freedom to attack but also the freedom to fail. And in part this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in about the time it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most ruthless gap between the patience and space he needs, and the opportunity he is going to get.

We saw a case of this during the international break, when a widely shared chart conveniently informed us that the player had been deemed – decisively – the worst signing of the recent market by a survey of 20 agents. And of course, the media are not the only ones in this. Team social media, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially aligned along the same principles, an environment deliberately geared for provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to ourselves? Do we realize, on any level, what this endless sluice of aggravation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of playing in the middle of it all, knowing on a bizarre chain-reaction level that every single thing about players is now essentially content, product, public property to be packaged and exchanged.

Indeed, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a major institution that must always be producing the strong emotions. However, partly this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of opinion most visibly and harshly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. All summer long we have been desiring players, praising them, drooling over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, a lot of those same players are now being disdained as failures. Is it time to worry about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker necessary? What was the point of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that he faces Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at home in the league and somehow in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like submitting a missing person’s report on a person who popped to the shops half an hour ago. Too open. Their star past his prime. The striker waste of money. The coach bald.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to inflect the way we watch it, an whole competition reoriented around talking points and reaction, an activity that occurs in the background while we browse through our devices, unable to disconnect from the constant flow of opinions and more takes. Perhaps Sesko bearing the brunt at present. However, we're all sacrificing something in this process.