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Picture the following: a smiling the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Next, juxtapose that with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, appearing like he just missed an open goal. Don't worry finding an actual photo of him missing; context is your adversary. Now, add some goal stats in a large, comical font. Don't forget some emoticons. Post it everywhere.

Will you point out that Højlund's goal count features scores in the Champions League while his counterpart does not compete in Europe? Certainly not. And would you note that several of Højlund's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is far superior to Slovenia and generates many more chances. If you manage online for a large outlet, raw engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the prime target, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of content spins. Your next task is to scan a lengthy podcast with the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "weird". Just before, where he prefaces his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. No one wants that. Simply make sure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. The audience will be outraged.

The Season of Potential and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has long been one of my preferred periods to watch football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are newly formed, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the coming months are staking their claims. The summer market is shut. No one is talking about the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are in contention. At this precise point, anything is possible.

However, for similar reasons, this period has also been one of my least favourite times to read about football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is reborn. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league right now? Please an answer now.

Sesko as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player caught between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The need to withhold final conclusions, allowing technical development and tactical sophistication to mature. And the imperative to produce instant verdicts, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, context-free condemnations and pointless comparisons, a square that can never truly be circled.

I do not propose to offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. He has been in the lineup four times in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and had a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we evaluating? Nor will I attempt to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts argue passionately on a popular show over whether he needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this season (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at his former club: a powerful, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: afforded the freedom to attack but also the freedom to fail. Partly this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most pitiless gulf between the patience and space he needs, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

There was an example of this during the national team pause, when a widely shared chart handily stated that the player had been deemed – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of football representatives. And of course, the press are by no means alone in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with a vested interest is now essentially operating along the same principles, an ecosystem explicitly geared for provocation.

The Mental Cost

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 minds? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of playing in the center of it all, knowing on some surreal chain-reaction level that every single thing about them is now basically content, product, public property to be repackaged and exchanged.

Indeed, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the cycle, a major institution that must always be producing the strong emotions. But also, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of opinion most visibly and cruelly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been desiring footballers, praising them, drooling over them. Now, only a handful of games later, many of those same players are now being disdained as broken goods. Should we start to worry about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need their striker wise? What was the point of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that Sesko meets Liverpool on Sunday: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the Premier League and yet in their own situation of feverish crisis, like filing a a report on a person who popped to the store half an hour ago. Too open. Their star past his prime. The striker an expensive flop. Arne Slot bald.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football itself, to influence the way we view it, an whole competition repivoted around talking points and immediate responses, something that happens in the backdrop while we scroll through our phones, incapable to disconnect from the constant flow of takes and more takes. It may be Sesko bearing the brunt right now. However, we're all sacrificing something here.