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Imagine this: a smiling the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Next, place that with a dejected the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, appearing like he's missed an open goal. Do not worry finding an actual photo of that miss; context is the enemy. Now, include some goal stats in a big, comical font. Remember some emoticons. Share it across all platforms.

Would you mention that Højlund's goal count includes scores in the Champions League while Sesko does not compete in Europe? Certainly not. Nor will you highlight that four of Højlund's goals came against weaker national sides, or that his national team is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and generates many more chances. If you run social media for a large outlet, raw interaction is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

Thus the wheel of online material spins. Your next task is to sift through a lengthy podcast featuring Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". Just before, where he qualifies his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. No one needs that. Simply make sure "strange" and "Sesko" appear together in the title. People will be outraged.

This Time of Promise and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my favourite periods to observe football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, squads and strategies are still fresh, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the season ahead are planting their flags. The transfer window is closed. No one is mentioning the quadruple yet. All teams are still in the game. At this precise point, all is possibility.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, this period has also been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. Because although no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is reborn. The German talent has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league right now? We need a decision immediately.

The Player as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player caught between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The need to withhold definitive judgment, allowing technical development and strategic understanding to mature. And the demand to produce instant verdicts, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, context-free criticisms and pointless comparisons, a puzzle that can never truly be solved.

I do not propose to provide a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's time at United to date. The guy has been in the lineup on four occasions in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and had a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we evaluating? Nor will I attempt to duplicate the pundits' notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits argue thrillingly on a podcast over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this season (one pundit), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I enjoyed watching him at his former club: a big, fast sports car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: afforded the license to rampage but also the leeway to fail. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" 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 opportunity he is going to get.

There was an example of this over the national team pause, when a viral chart handily informed us that the player had been deemed – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a survey of 20 agents. And of course, the press are by no means the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially operating along the identical rules, an environment deliberately nosed towards provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite sluice of aggravation is doing to our brains? Separate from the essential weirdness of being a player in the center of it all, aware on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that each aspect about players is now basically material, product, public property to be packaged and traded.

And yes, partly this is because United are United, the entity that continues to feed the narrative, a big club that must constantly be generating the big feelings. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of opinion most visibly and harshly glimpsed at this season, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. All summer long we have been coveting footballers, praising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, many of those very players are now being disdained as broken goods. Is it time to worry about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the point of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that he faces Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at home in the league and yet in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like filing a missing person’s report on a person who popped to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Their star past his prime. Alexander Isak waste of money. Arne Slot bald.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football itself, to inflect the way we view it, an whole competition reoriented around talking points and reaction, something that occurs in the background while we scroll through our phones, incapable to detach from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. It may be Sesko bearing the brunt right now. But in a way, we're all losing something here.