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Imagine the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Now, juxtapose that with a dejected the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he just missed an open goal. Do not worry finding an actual photo of that miss; context is your adversary. Then, include statistics in a large, silly font. Remember the emojis. Post the image everywhere.

Would you point out that Højlund's tally includes scores in the Champions League while his counterpart does not compete in continental tournaments? Of course not. Nor would you highlight that several of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and generates many more chances. You run online for a major brand, pure interaction is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

So the cycle of online material spins. The next job is to sift through a lengthy podcast with Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he describes 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. No one needs that. Simply ensure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. People will be outraged.

This Time of Potential and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has long been one of my favourite periods to observe football. Leaves fall, winds shift, squads and strategies are newly formed, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the coming months are staking their claims. The summer market is closed. Nobody 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 read about football. For while no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league at this moment? Please a decision now.

Sesko as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player caught between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to delay final conclusions, allowing technical development and tactical sophistication to mature. And the demand to produce permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of opinions and memes, context-free condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a square that can never truly be circled.

I do not propose to provide a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. He has been in the lineup on four occasions in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and taken a mere of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? And will I attempt to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts argue passionately on a podcast over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this year (one pundit), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I enjoyed watching him at Leipzig: a big, 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 miss. 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 summarily issued in about the time it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most pitiless gulf between the patience and space he needs, and the opportunity he is going to get.

We saw a case of this during the national team pause, when a widely shared infographic conveniently informed us that the player had been deemed – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a survey of 20 agents. Naturally, the press are by no means the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of fake followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially operating along the identical rules, an environment deliberately geared for provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to ourselves? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite stream of irritation is doing to our brains? Separate from the essential weirdness of playing in the center of this, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about them is now essentially content, product, public property to be packaged and traded.

And yes, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that continues to feed the narrative, a big club that must always be producing the big feelings. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of opinion most clearly and harshly observed at this season, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. All summer long we have been desiring players, praising them, salivating over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, a lot of those very players are now being disdained as failures. Should we start to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that he meets Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at home in the Premier League and somehow in their own state of perceived turmoil, like filing a missing person’s report on someone who popped to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Their star past his prime. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. Arne Slot bald.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has started to replace football the actual game, to influence the way we watch it, an entire sport reoriented around discussion topics and reaction, something that happens in the background while we browse through our phones, incapable to disconnect from the saline drip of takes and more takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit right now. However, everyone is sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.