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Imagine this: a smiling Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Next, juxtapose it with a dejected the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he's missed a sitter. Don't worry locating an actual photo of that miss; context is your adversary. Then, add some goal stats in a large, comical font. Remember the emojis. Share the image everywhere.

Would you point out that Højlund's goal count includes strikes in the Champions League while his counterpart isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. Nor will you note that several of the Dane's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is far superior to Slovenia and generates many more chances. If you run social media for a large outlet, raw interaction is what pays the bills, United are the biggest draw, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

So the wheel of online material turns. Your next task is to sift through a lengthy interview with Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he calls 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"... well, cut that. Nobody wants that. Just ensure "strange" and "the player" are paired in the title. People will be furious.

The Season of Promise and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my preferred times to observe football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are newly formed, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the season ahead are planting their flags. The summer market is shut. Nobody is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are still in the game. Right now, anything is possible.

However, for similar reasons, this period has also been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league right now? Please a decision immediately.

Sesko as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player caught between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The need to delay final conclusions, allowing technical development and strategic understanding to mature. And the imperative to generate instant definitive judgment, a constant stream of takes and jokes, out-of-context condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a puzzle that can not truly be circled.

It is not my aim to offer a substantive evaluation of Sesko's time at United to date. The guy has started on four occasions in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and had a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we analysing? Nor will I attempt to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits duel passionately on a podcast over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be a success this season (Neville), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at his former club: a powerful, screeching racing car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: given the license to rampage but also the leeway to fail. And in part this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most ruthless gap between the time and air he requires, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

We saw a case of this over the international break, when a widely shared chart handily stated that the player had been judged – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the media are not alone in this. Club channels, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: everybody with skin in the game is now essentially aligned along the identical rules, an environment deliberately geared for controversy.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite sluice of aggravation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of being a player in the middle of this, aware on some surreal butterfly-effect level that each aspect about them is now basically material, commodity, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

And yes, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that keeps nourishing the narrative, a major institution that must always be producing the big feelings. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of opinion most visibly and cruelly glimpsed 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 dismissed as failures. Is it time to be concerned about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker wise? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that he faces Liverpool on the weekend: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at home in the league and yet in their own state of feverish crisis, like filing a missing person’s report on a person who popped to the shops 30 minutes ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah finished. The striker an expensive flop. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to inflect the way we view it, an entire sport repivoted around talking points and reaction, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we scroll through our phones, unable to detach from the saline drip of takes and further hot takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit right now. But in a way, everyone is sacrificing a part of the experience here.