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Imagine this: a smiling Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Now, place that with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed a sitter. Do not bother finding a real picture of that miss; context is your adversary. Now, include some goal stats in a large, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Share the image across all platforms.

Would you point out that Højlund's goal count features strikes in the Champions League while Sesko isn't playing in Europe? Of course not. And would you note that several of Højlund's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and creates far more chances. You run social media for a major brand, raw interaction is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

So the wheel of content turns. Your next task is to sift through a lengthy podcast featuring the legendary goalkeeper and find 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, remove that part. Nobody wants that. Just ensure "strange" and "the player" appear together in the headline. People will be outraged.

This Time of Promise and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my preferred times to observe football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, squads and strategies are still fresh, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the coming months are planting their flags. The summer market is shut. No one is mentioning the quadruple yet. All teams are in contention. At this precise point, all is possibility.

Yet, for similar reasons, this period has long been one of my least favourite times to read about football. For while no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league at this moment? Please an answer immediately.

Sesko as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player caught between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The need to delay definitive judgment, allowing layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to mature. And the imperative to generate instant verdicts, a conveyor belt of opinions and memes, out-of-context condemnations and pointless comparisons, a puzzle that can not truly be circled.

It is not my aim to provide a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's time at United to date. He has started four times in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and had a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we analysing? And do I propose to duplicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts argue passionately on a popular show over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this year (Neville), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I enjoyed watching him at his former club: a powerful, fast racing car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: given the license to attack but also the leeway to miss. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest 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 pitiless gulf between the time and air he needs, and the time and air he is going to get.

There was an example of this over the national team pause, when a widely shared chart conveniently stated that the player had been judged – decisively – the worst signing of the recent market by a survey of 20 agents. And of course, the media are by no means alone in this. Club channels, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: all parties with skin in the game is now basically operating along the identical rules, an environment deliberately geared for provocation.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite stream of aggravation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the middle of it all, knowing on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that each aspect about players is now essentially content, commodity, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

Indeed, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the cycle, a big club that must constantly be generating the strong emotions. However, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of judgment most clearly and cruelly glimpsed at this season, about a month after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been desiring footballers, eulogising them, drooling over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are now being disdained as failures. Should we start to worry about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker wise? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that he faces Liverpool on Sunday: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and yet in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like filing a a report on someone who went to the store half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah finished. Alexander Isak waste of money. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football itself, to influence the way we view it, an entire sport reoriented around discussion topics and reaction, something that occurs in the backdrop while we browse through our phones, incapable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and further hot takes. It may be this player taking the hit at present. But in a way, everyone is losing something in this process.