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Picture this: a smiling the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Next, juxtapose it with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, looking as if he just missed a sitter. Do not bother locating a real picture of that miss; background information is your adversary. Then, add some goal stats in a big, comical font. Remember some emoticons. Post the image everywhere.

Will you mention that Højlund's goal count features strikes in the Champions League while Sesko 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 his national team is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and generates many more chances. If you run social media for a large outlet, pure interaction is your livelihood, United are the biggest draw, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

So the cycle of online material spins. Your next task is to scan a 44-minute podcast featuring Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "weird". Just before, where he qualifies his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. Nobody needs that. Just make sure "weird" and "Sesko" appear together in the headline. People will be outraged.

The Season of Potential and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my preferred times to watch football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, squads and strategies are still fresh, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the coming months are planting their flags. The summer market is shut. Nobody is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are still in the game. Right now, anything is possible.

However, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my most disliked times to read about football. Because although no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is resurgent. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league right now? We need an answer immediately.

Sesko as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player caught between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to withhold definitive judgment, to let layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to mature. And the demand to produce permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and memes, context-free condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a puzzle that can never truly be solved.

I do not propose to provide a in-depth analysis of Sesko's time at Manchester United to date. He has been in the lineup four times in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and taken a mere of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? Nor will I attempt to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's 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 year (one pundit), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at his former club: a powerful, fast sports car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: afforded the license to attack but also the freedom to fail. And in part this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most pitiless gulf between the patience and space he requires, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

We saw a case of this during the international break, when a widely shared chart conveniently stated that Sesko had been deemed – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a poll of football representatives. And of course, the press are not alone in such behavior. Club channels, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: everybody with a vested interest is now basically operating along the same principles, an environment deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to ourselves? Do we realize, on any level, what this infinite sluice of aggravation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of being a player in the middle of it all, aware on some surreal chain-reaction level that each aspect about players is now basically material, product, public property to be repackaged and exchanged.

And yes, partly this is because United are United, the entity that keeps nourishing the narrative, a major institution that must constantly be generating the big feelings. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of judgment most visibly and cruelly glimpsed at this season, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been coveting footballers, eulogising them, drooling over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are already being disdained as broken goods. Is it time to worry about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need their striker necessary? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that Sesko faces Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at home in the league and yet in their own state of perceived turmoil, like filing a a report on a person who popped to the store half an hour ago. Too open. Their star finished. Alexander Isak waste of money. The coach losing his hair.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to inflect the way we watch it, an whole competition repivoted around discussion topics and reaction, an activity that happens in the backdrop while we scroll through our devices, incapable to detach from the constant flow of takes and further hot takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit right now. However, we're all sacrificing something in this process.