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Imagine this: a smiling the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Next, place that with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, looking as if he's missed an open goal. Do not bother finding a real picture of him missing; context is your adversary. Then, add statistics in a big, comical font. Remember the emojis. Post the image everywhere.

Would you point out that Højlund's goal count features strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. And will you note that four of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and generates far more scoring opportunities. You run social media for a major brand, pure interaction is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

Thus the wheel of online material turns. The next job is to sift through a 44-minute podcast with the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he describes 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, cut that. No one needs that. Just make sure "strange" and "the player" appear together in the headline. People will be outraged.

This Time of Promise and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my favourite times to observe football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, squads and strategies are newly formed, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the coming months are planting their flags. The summer market is shut. No one is mentioning the quadruple yet. Everyone are in contention. Right now, anything is possible.

Yet, for similar reasons, this period has also been one of my least favourite times to read about football. Because although no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is resurgent. The German talent has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league right now? We need a decision immediately.

Sesko as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The need to delay definitive judgment, allowing technical development and strategic understanding to mature. And the demand to produce permanent definitive judgment, a constant stream of takes and memes, context-free criticisms and meaningless contrasts, a square that can not truly be circled.

It is not my aim to provide a substantive analysis of Sesko's time at Manchester United to date. He has started four times in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and had a grand total of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? And 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 (one pundit), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at his former club: a powerful, fast racing car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: given the license to rampage but also the leeway to fail. Partly this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in about the time it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most pitiless gulf between the time and air he requires, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

We saw a case of this during the international break, when a viral infographic conveniently stated that Sesko had been judged – decisively – the worst signing of the recent market by a poll of football representatives. And of course, the press are by no means the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with skin in the game is now basically operating along the same principles, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to ourselves? Do we realize, on some level, what this infinite sluice of irritation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of playing in the center of it all, knowing on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about players is now basically content, commodity, open-source property to be packaged and exchanged.

Indeed, partly this is because United are United, the entity that keeps nourishing the cycle, a major institution that must constantly be producing the big feelings. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of judgment most clearly and harshly observed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. All summer long we have been desiring players, praising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, many of those same players are already being disdained as broken goods. Is it time to be concerned about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker wise? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that Sesko meets their rivals 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 went to the store 30 minutes ago. Too open. Their star finished. The striker an expensive flop. Arne Slot bald.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to inflect the way we view it, an whole competition reoriented around discussion topics and reaction, something that happens in the background while we browse through our devices, unable to detach from the constant flow of takes and further hot takes. Perhaps Sesko bearing the brunt at present. However, everyone is losing something here.