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Imagine the following: a happy the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Now, juxtapose it with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he just missed an open goal. Do not worry finding a real picture of him missing; background information is the enemy. Then, include some goal stats in a big, comical font. Remember some emoticons. Post the image everywhere.

Would you mention that Højlund's goal count includes scores in the Champions League while his counterpart does not compete in Europe? Of course not. Nor will you note that four of Højlund's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is much stronger to Slovenia and creates far more scoring opportunities. If you run 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 wheel of content turns. Your next task is to scan a lengthy podcast featuring Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where Schmeichel qualifies his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. No one wants that. Simply make sure "strange" and "Sesko" are paired in the headline. People will be outraged.

The Season of Potential and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has long been one of my favourite times to observe football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, the teams and tactics are newly formed, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the season ahead are staking their claims. The summer market is shut. Nobody is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are still in the game. At this precise point, all is possibility.

However, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my least favourite times to read about football. Because although no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is reborn. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league right now? Please an answer immediately.

The Player as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to delay definitive judgment, to let technical development and strategic understanding to develop. And the imperative to produce permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, context-free criticisms and pointless contrasts, a square that can never truly be circled.

I do not propose to provide a substantive evaluation of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. The guy has started four times in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and taken a grand total of 116 touches. What precisely are we analysing? Nor will I attempt to replicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts argue thrillingly on a popular show over whether he needs 10 goals to be a success this season (one pundit), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I loved watching him at his former club: a powerful, fast racing car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: given the license to rampage but also the freedom to fail. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in roughly the duration it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most ruthless gulf between the patience and space he requires, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

We saw a case of this during the international break, when a widely shared infographic handily stated that the player had been deemed – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a survey of football representatives. Naturally, the press are by no means the only ones in this. Team social media, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: everybody with skin in the game is now essentially aligned along the same principles, an environment explicitly nosed towards provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to ourselves? Do we realize, on any level, what this infinite sluice of irritation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of playing in the middle of this, knowing on some surreal chain-reaction level that each aspect about them is now essentially content, product, public property to be repackaged and exchanged.

Indeed, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that continues to feed the narrative, a big club that must always be generating the strong emotions. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, a swing of opinion most visibly and harshly observed at this season, about a month after the window has closed. All summer long we have been coveting footballers, praising them, drooling over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are now being disdained as failures. Should we start to worry about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need their striker wise? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that he meets Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the Premier League and somehow in their own situation of feverish crisis, like submitting a a report on a person who went to the shops 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah finished. The striker an expensive flop. The coach bald.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has started to replace football the actual game, to inflect the way we watch it, an entire sport repivoted around discussion topics and immediate responses, an activity that occurs in the background while we browse through our phones, unable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit right now. But in a way, everyone is losing something in this process.