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Picture the following: a happy the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Now, place it with a dejected Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he's missed a sitter. Do not bother finding a real picture of him missing; background information is your adversary. Now, add some goal stats in a large, comical font. Remember the emojis. Share the image everywhere.

Will you point out that Højlund's tally includes scores in the premier European competition while his counterpart does not compete in Europe? Of course not. Nor will you note that four of the Dane's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and generates many more scoring opportunities. You manage social media for a large outlet, pure engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the prime target, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

So the wheel of content turns. Your next task is to scan a lengthy podcast with the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he prefaces his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. No one needs that. Just ensure "weird" and "the player" appear together in the title. The audience will be furious.

The Season of Potential 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, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the coming months are staking their claims. The summer market is closed. No one is mentioning the quadruple yet. Everyone are in contention. Right now, anything is possible.

However, for many of the same 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. Jack Grealish is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league right now? We need an answer now.

Sesko as The Prime Example

In many ways, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to delay definitive judgment, allowing technical development and tactical sophistication to develop. And the demand to produce permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, out-of-context condemnations and pointless contrasts, a square that can never truly be circled.

I do not propose to offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's time at United so far. He has been in the lineup four times in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and taken a grand total of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? Nor do I propose to replicate the pundits' notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits duel passionately on a popular show over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this year (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I loved watching him at Leipzig: a big, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: afforded the freedom to rampage but also the leeway to fail. And in part this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in roughly the duration it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most ruthless gulf between the time and air he needs, and the opportunity he is going to get.

There was a case of this during the international break, when a widely shared chart conveniently informed us that Sesko had been judged – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the press are by no means the only ones in this. Club channels, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with a vested interest is now basically aligned along the identical rules, an ecosystem deliberately nosed towards provocation.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to ourselves? Are we aware, on any level, what this infinite sluice of irritation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of playing in the center of this, knowing on some surreal chain-reaction level that every single thing about players is now essentially content, commodity, public property to be repackaged and exchanged.

And yes, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that continues to feed the cycle, a major institution that must constantly be generating the big feelings. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of opinion most visibly and harshly observed at this time of year, about a month after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been coveting players, eulogising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those same players are now being disdained as broken goods. Should we start to worry about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker wise? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that he meets their rivals on the weekend: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at home in the Premier League and somehow in their own state of perceived turmoil, like submitting a a report on someone who went to the shops 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Their star finished. The striker an expensive flop. The coach losing his hair.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football itself, to influence the way we view it, an whole competition reoriented around discussion topics and immediate responses, something that happens in the backdrop while we scroll through our phones, unable to disconnect from the saline drip of takes and more takes. It may be Sesko bearing the brunt right now. But in a way, everyone is losing a part of the experience here.