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Imagine this: a happy Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, juxtapose it with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, looking as if he just missed a sitter. Do not worry locating a real picture of that miss; context is your adversary. Then, include some goal stats in a big, silly font. Don't forget some emoticons. Post it everywhere.

Would you point out that Højlund's goal count includes scores in the Champions League while his counterpart isn't playing in continental tournaments? Of course not. Nor will you highlight that several of the Dane's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that Denmark is much stronger to Slovenia and creates many more scoring opportunities. If you run online for a major brand, raw interaction is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

Thus the wheel of content turns. The next job is to sift through a 44-minute podcast featuring the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where Schmeichel prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. Nobody needs that. Just ensure "weird" and "the player" appear together in the headline. The audience will be furious.

This Time of Potential and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has long been one of my favourite periods to watch football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are still fresh, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the coming months are planting their flags. The summer market is closed. Nobody is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. All teams are in contention. Right now, all is possibility.

However, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. For while no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? Please a decision 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 need to delay definitive judgment, to let technical development and strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to generate instant verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, context-free condemnations and pointless contrasts, a square that can never truly be solved.

I do not propose to provide a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's time at United so far. He has started four times in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and taken a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we evaluating? And do I propose to duplicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts argue passionately on a popular show over whether he needs ten strikes to be a success this year (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at Leipzig: a big, fast sports car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: afforded the license to attack but also the freedom to miss. Partly this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in about the time it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most pitiless gap between the time and air he requires, and the time and air he is going to get.

There was a case of this over the national team pause, when a widely shared chart handily informed us that the player had been judged – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the media are by no means alone in this. Team social media, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of fake followers: everybody with skin in the game is now basically operating along the identical rules, an environment deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to us? Do we realize, on some level, what this endless stream of irritation is doing to our minds? Separate from the inherent strangeness of playing in the center of this, knowing on some surreal chain-reaction level that each aspect about them is now basically content, commodity, open-source property to be repackaged and traded.

And yes, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that continues to feed the cycle, a major institution that must constantly be generating the big feelings. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of opinion most visibly and harshly observed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. All summer long we have been desiring footballers, eulogising them, salivating over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, a lot of those same players are already being dismissed as failures. Is it time to be concerned about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the point of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that he meets Liverpool on Sunday: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and yet in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like submitting a a 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.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to influence the way we view it, an entire sport reoriented around talking points and reaction, an activity that happens in the backdrop while we scroll through our devices, unable to detach from the saline drip of opinions and further hot takes. Perhaps Sesko taking the hit right now. But in a way, everyone is sacrificing something here.