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Imagine this: a smiling Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Next, place it with a dejected Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed a sitter. Do not worry locating an actual photo of that miss; background information is the enemy. Then, include statistics in a large, comical font. Remember the emojis. Share the image across all platforms.

Will you point out that Højlund's goal count includes scores in the premier European competition while Sesko does not compete in continental tournaments? Of course not. And would you note that several of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and creates many more chances. If you run online for a major brand, raw engagement is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

So the cycle of content spins. The next job is to scan a lengthy interview with the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "weird". Just before, where he prefaces his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. No one needs that. Just ensure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired in the headline. The audience will be outraged.

This Time of Promise and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has long been one of my favourite times to observe football. Leaves fall, 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 shut. No one is talking about the quadruple yet. All teams are in contention. Right now, anything is possible.

Yet, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my least favourite times to read about football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league right now? Please an answer immediately.

The Player as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player caught between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The need to delay final conclusions, to let technical development and tactical sophistication to develop. And the imperative to generate permanent verdicts, a constant stream of takes and memes, context-free condemnations and pointless contrasts, a square that can never truly be solved.

I do not propose to offer a substantive evaluation of Sesko's time at Manchester United so far. He has been in the lineup four times in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and had a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we analysing? Nor will I attempt to duplicate the pundits' notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel passionately on a podcast over whether he needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this season (one pundit), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at Leipzig: a powerful, fast sports car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: given the license to attack but also the leeway to fail. Partly this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in about the time it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most pitiless gulf between the time and air he requires, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

We saw a case of this over the national team pause, when a widely shared chart handily stated that the player had been judged – decisively – the worst signing of the recent market by a survey of 20 agents. Naturally, the media are not alone in such behavior. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with a vested interest is now essentially aligned along the identical rules, an environment deliberately geared for provocation.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to ourselves? Do we realize, on some level, what this endless stream of irritation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of being a player in the middle of this, aware on some surreal chain-reaction level that each aspect about players is now essentially material, commodity, public property to be packaged and traded.

And yes, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that continues to feed the narrative, a big club that must always be producing the strong emotions. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of judgment most visibly and harshly glimpsed at this season, about a month after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been desiring footballers, eulogising them, drooling over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, many of those very players are already being dismissed 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 another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that Sesko meets their rivals on Sunday: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the league and yet in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like submitting a a report on a person who popped to the store half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah finished. The striker waste of money. The coach bald.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has started to replace football the actual game, to influence the way we watch it, an whole competition reoriented around discussion topics and reaction, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we scroll through our devices, unable to detach from the saline drip of opinions and further hot takes. It may be Sesko bearing the brunt at present. However, everyone is sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.