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Picture the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Next, juxtapose that with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, appearing like he's missed an open goal. Do not worry locating a real picture of him missing; background information is the enemy. Now, include statistics in a large, silly font. Remember the emojis. Post it across all platforms.

Would you mention that Højlund's tally includes strikes in the Champions League while his counterpart does not compete in continental tournaments? Certainly not. And will you highlight that four of the Dane's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and generates far more scoring opportunities. If you run social media for a major brand, raw engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

Thus the wheel of online material turns. Your next task is to sift through a 44-minute podcast featuring the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". Just before, where Schmeichel qualifies his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. No one needs that. Simply ensure "strange" and "Sesko" are paired in the headline. The audience will be furious.

This Time of Potential and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my favourite periods to observe football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, the teams and tactics are still fresh, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the coming months are staking their claims. The transfer window is shut. Nobody is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. All teams are in contention. At this precise point, anything is possible.

However, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my least favourite times to read about football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is reborn. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league at this moment? We need an answer immediately.

Sesko as Patient Zero

In many ways, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player caught between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to delay definitive judgment, to let layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to produce instant definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, context-free condemnations and meaningless contrasts, a puzzle that can never truly be solved.

It is not my aim to offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's time at Manchester United to date. He has started on four occasions in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and taken a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we evaluating? 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 argue thrillingly on a popular show over whether he needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this season (Neville), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I enjoyed watching him at his former club: a big, fast racing car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: afforded the freedom to rampage but also the freedom to miss. And in part this is why Manchester 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 load a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most ruthless gulf between the patience and space he requires, and the time and air he is going to get.

There was an example of this during the national team pause, when a widely shared infographic handily stated that the player had been judged – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a survey of football representatives. Naturally, the press are not the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: everybody with skin in the game is now basically aligned along the same principles, an ecosystem deliberately geared for controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? Do we realize, on some level, what this infinite stream of irritation is doing to our minds? Separate from the essential weirdness of being a player in the center of this, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that every single thing about players is now basically material, product, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

And yes, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that continues to feed the cycle, a major institution that must always be producing the big feelings. However, partly this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of opinion most clearly and harshly observed at this time of year, about a month after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been coveting footballers, praising them, salivating over them. Now, only a handful of games later, many of those same players are now being dismissed as broken goods. Should we start to worry about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that Sesko faces their rivals on Sunday: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the Premier League and yet in their own state of feverish crisis, like submitting a a report on someone who went to the store half an hour ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah finished. The striker an expensive flop. Arne Slot bald.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football itself, to influence the way we view it, an entire sport reoriented around talking points and reaction, something that occurs in the background while we scroll through our devices, incapable to disconnect from the constant flow of takes and more takes. Perhaps this player taking the hit right now. But in a way, we're all sacrificing something here.