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Picture this: a smiling Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Next, place it with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, looking as if he's missed an open goal. Don't bother finding a real picture of that miss; context is your adversary. Now, include some goal stats in a big, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Post it across all platforms.

Will you point out that Højlund's tally includes scores in the Champions League while his counterpart does not compete in Europe? Certainly not. Nor will you note that several of Højlund's goals came against weaker national sides, or that his national team is much stronger to Slovenia and generates many more scoring opportunities. You run online for a major brand, raw interaction is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

So the wheel of online material spins. The next job is to scan a lengthy interview with the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". Just before, where he prefaces his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. Nobody needs that. Just ensure "strange" and "the player" appear together in the headline. The audience will be furious.

The Season of Promise and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has long been one of my preferred times to observe football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, the teams and tactics are newly formed, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the coming months are planting their flags. The summer market is closed. No one is mentioning the quadruple yet. Everyone are still in the game. At this precise point, anything is possible.

Yet, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my most disliked times to read about football. Because although no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? We need an answer immediately.

Sesko as Patient Zero

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 imperative to withhold definitive judgment, to let layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to mature. And the imperative to generate instant verdicts, a constant stream of takes and memes, out-of-context condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a puzzle that can not truly be solved.

I do not propose to provide a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's stint at United to date. He has started four times in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and taken a mere of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? Nor will I attempt to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts argue passionately on a popular show over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this season (Neville), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I enjoyed watching Sesko at his former club: a powerful, fast sports car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: given the license to attack but also the freedom to miss. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to load 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 likely to receive.

There was a case of this over the international break, when a widely shared chart handily informed us that Sesko had been deemed – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a poll of football representatives. Naturally, the media are by no means alone in such behavior. Club channels, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: all parties with skin in the game is now basically aligned along the same principles, an environment deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to ourselves? Do we realize, on any level, what this endless stream of irritation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the middle of it all, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that every single thing about players is now essentially material, commodity, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

And yes, partly this is because United are United, the entity that continues to feed the narrative, a big club that must constantly be producing the strong emotions. However, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of opinion most clearly and cruelly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. All summer long we have been coveting footballers, praising them, drooling over them. Now, only a handful of games later, a lot of those very players are already being disdained as broken goods. Should we start to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker necessary? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that he meets Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at home in the league and somehow in their own state of perceived turmoil, like filing a missing person’s report on a person who popped to the store 30 minutes 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 storyline of football has begun to supplant football itself, to influence the way we watch it, an whole competition reoriented around discussion topics and immediate responses, an activity that occurs in the background while we browse through our devices, unable to disconnect from the constant flow of opinions and more takes. It may be this player bearing the brunt right now. However, everyone is sacrificing something in this process.