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Picture this: a smiling Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, juxtapose it with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he just missed an open goal. Don't bother finding an actual photo of him missing; context is your adversary. Now, add statistics in a big, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Share it across all platforms.

Will you point out that Højlund's tally includes strikes in the premier European competition while his counterpart does not compete in continental tournaments? Certainly not. And will you highlight that several of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is much stronger to Slovenia and generates far more chances. If you manage social media for a major brand, raw interaction is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

So the wheel of online material turns. Your next task is to sift through a 44-minute podcast with the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he calls 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"... well, cut that. No one wants that. Just ensure "weird" and "the player" appear together in the title. People will be furious.

The Season of Promise and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my favourite times to observe football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, squads and strategies are still fresh, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the coming months are staking their claims. The transfer window is shut. No one is talking about the quadruple yet. All teams are still in the game. At this precise point, all is possibility.

However, for similar reasons, this period has long been one of my least favourite times to read about football. For while no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league at this moment? We need a decision immediately.

Sesko as The Prime Example

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player caught between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The need to delay final conclusions, allowing technical development and tactical sophistication to develop. And the demand to produce instant verdicts, a conveyor belt of opinions and memes, context-free condemnations and pointless contrasts, a square that can never truly be circled.

I do not propose to offer a substantive evaluation of Sesko's time at United to date. The guy has started on four occasions in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and had a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we analysing? And will I attempt to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel passionately on a podcast over whether he needs 10 goals to be a success this year (Neville), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at his former club: a powerful, fast racing car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: given the license to attack but also the freedom to miss. And in part this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most ruthless gap between the patience and space he needs, and the time and air he is going to get.

We saw an example of this over the international break, when a widely shared chart conveniently stated that the player had been judged – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a survey of football representatives. And of course, the press are not the only ones in this. Club channels, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: all parties with a vested interest is now basically operating along the identical rules, an ecosystem explicitly geared for controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite sluice of irritation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the center of this, knowing on some surreal butterfly-effect level that each aspect about players is now essentially content, product, public property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a big club that must always be generating the big feelings. However, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of opinion most visibly and cruelly observed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been coveting footballers, praising them, drooling over them. Now, just a few weeks in, many of those same players are now being disdained as failures. Is it time to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that Sesko meets their rivals on the weekend: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the league and yet in their own situation of feverish crisis, like submitting a a report on a person who popped to the store 30 minutes ago. Too open. Their star past his prime. Alexander Isak waste of money. The coach bald.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to inflect the way we watch it, an entire sport repivoted around discussion topics and reaction, something that happens in the background while we browse through our devices, incapable to detach from the constant flow of opinions and more takes. Perhaps this player taking the hit right now. But in a way, everyone is losing a part of the experience in this process.