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Imagine the following: a happy Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Next, juxtapose it with a dejected Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, appearing like he's missed an open goal. Do not worry locating an actual photo of him missing; background information is the enemy. Then, add some goal stats in a big, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Share the image everywhere.

Would you point out that Højlund's tally features strikes in the Champions League while Sesko does not compete in Europe? Certainly not. And will you highlight that four of the Dane's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and generates many more scoring opportunities. You run social media for a major brand, raw interaction is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the prime target, and context is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of content turns. The next job is to scan a 44-minute podcast with the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "weird". Just before, where Schmeichel prefaces his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. No one wants that. Simply ensure "weird" and "the player" appear together in the headline. The audience will be outraged.

The Season of Potential and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my preferred periods to observe football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are newly formed, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the season ahead are planting their flags. The summer market is closed. No one is talking about the quadruple yet. Everyone are in contention. Right now, anything is possible.

Yet, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is reborn. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league at this moment? Please a decision immediately.

The Player as Patient Zero

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The need to withhold final conclusions, to let technical development and tactical sophistication to mature. And the imperative to produce permanent definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, context-free condemnations and meaningless contrasts, a square that can not truly be circled.

I do not propose to offer a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's time at Manchester United so far. He has started on four occasions in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and taken a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we analysing? And will I attempt to replicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel thrillingly on a podcast over whether he needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this year (Neville), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I loved watching Sesko at his former club: a powerful, screeching sports car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: afforded the freedom to attack but also the leeway to fail. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in roughly the duration it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most ruthless gap between the patience and space he requires, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

We saw a case of this over the international break, when a widely shared chart handily informed us that Sesko had been deemed – decisively – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a survey of football representatives. And of course, the media are not alone in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: all parties with skin in the game is now essentially aligned along the identical rules, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? Do we realize, on some level, what this infinite stream of irritation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of playing in the center of this, aware on some surreal chain-reaction level that every single thing about them is now basically material, product, public property to be packaged and exchanged.

Indeed, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that continues to feed the narrative, a big club that must constantly be producing the big feelings. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of judgment most visibly and cruelly glimpsed at this season, about a month after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been coveting players, eulogising them, salivating over them. Now, only a handful of games later, many of those same players are now being disdained as failures. 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 feels appropriate that he faces Liverpool on Sunday: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the Premier League and somehow in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like filing a missing person’s report on a person who went to the store half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah past his prime. The striker an expensive flop. The coach losing his hair.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to influence the way we view it, an entire sport repivoted around talking points and immediate responses, something that occurs in the background while we browse through our devices, unable to disconnect from the constant flow of opinions and further hot takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit at present. However, everyone is losing a part of the experience in this process.