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Imagine the following: a happy the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Next, juxtapose it with a dejected the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, looking as if he's missed a sitter. Do not worry locating a real picture of that miss; context is your adversary. Now, add some goal stats in a large, comical font. Don't forget some emoticons. Share the image across all platforms.

Will you point out that Højlund's goal count features strikes in the premier European competition while his counterpart does not compete in continental tournaments? Certainly not. Nor would you note that four of the Dane's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and creates many more scoring opportunities. You manage social media for a major brand, pure engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and context is your sworn enemy.

So the cycle of content spins. The next job is to sift through a lengthy interview with Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he prefaces 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 "the player" are paired in the headline. The audience will be furious.

The Season of Potential and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has long been one of my preferred periods to watch football. Leaves fall, winds shift, the teams and tactics are newly formed, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the season ahead are staking their claims. The summer market is shut. No one is talking about the quadruple yet. All teams 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 consume news on football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is reborn. The German talent has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league at this moment? We need an answer now.

The Player as The Prime Example

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The need to delay final conclusions, allowing technical development and tactical sophistication to mature. And the demand to generate permanent definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of opinions and memes, out-of-context condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a square that can never truly be solved.

It is not my aim to offer a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's time at United so far. He has been in the lineup four times in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and taken a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we analysing? And do I propose to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits duel passionately on a podcast over whether he needs ten strikes to be a success this year (one pundit), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at his former club: a powerful, fast racing car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: afforded the freedom to rampage but also the leeway to miss. And in part this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most pitiless gap between the patience and space he requires, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

We saw a case of this during the national team pause, when a viral infographic handily stated that the player had been judged – decisively – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a survey of football representatives. And of course, the press are by no means alone in such behavior. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: everybody with skin in the game is now basically aligned along the same principles, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards 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? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of being a player in the middle of it all, aware on some surreal butterfly-effect level that each aspect about them is now essentially material, product, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that keeps nourishing the cycle, a big club that must always be generating the big feelings. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of opinion most clearly and cruelly glimpsed at this season, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been coveting players, eulogising them, salivating over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, many of those very players are already being disdained as failures. Is it time to be concerned about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need their striker wise? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that he meets Liverpool on Sunday: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the Premier League and yet in their own situation of feverish crisis, like submitting a a report on someone who popped to the store half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Their star past his prime. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. Arne Slot bald.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has started to replace football the actual game, to influence the way we watch it, an entire sport repivoted around talking points and reaction, something that occurs in the backdrop while we browse through our phones, incapable to detach from the constant flow of takes and further hot takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit right now. But in a way, we're all losing a part of the experience here.