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Imagine the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, juxtapose that with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, appearing like he just missed a sitter. Do not worry finding an actual photo of him missing; background information is the enemy. Now, include some goal stats in a large, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Share it everywhere.

Would you point out that Højlund's tally features scores in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in Europe? Of course not. Nor will you highlight that four of Højlund's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and generates many more chances. You run online for a large outlet, raw interaction is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

So the wheel of content turns. Your next task is to scan a lengthy interview with the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where Schmeichel prefaces his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. No one needs that. Just make sure "strange" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. 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. Leaves fall, the wind turns, squads and strategies are still fresh, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the season ahead are planting their flags. The transfer window is shut. No one is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are still in the game. Right now, anything is possible.

However, for many of the same reasons, this period 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 reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league at this moment? Please an answer now.

The Player as The Prime Example

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to withhold definitive judgment, to let technical development and tactical sophistication to mature. And the imperative to generate instant verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and memes, out-of-context condemnations and pointless comparisons, a square that can never truly be circled.

It is not my aim to offer a substantive evaluation of Sesko's time at Manchester United to date. The guy has started four times in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and had a mere of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? And do I propose to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits argue thrillingly on a podcast over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be a success this year (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I loved watching him at Leipzig: a big, fast racing car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: afforded the license to attack but also the leeway to fail. Partly 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 watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most ruthless gulf between the time and air he needs, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

There was an example of this during the international break, when a widely shared chart conveniently stated that Sesko had been deemed – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a poll of 20 agents. And of course, the media are not the only ones in this. Club channels, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: everybody with skin in the game is now essentially aligned along the identical rules, an environment deliberately nosed towards provocation.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to ourselves? Do we realize, on some level, what this infinite stream of aggravation is doing to our brains? Separate from the inherent strangeness of playing in the middle of this, aware on some surreal chain-reaction level that every single thing about them is now essentially content, product, open-source property to be packaged and exchanged.

And yes, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that continues to feed the narrative, a big club that must constantly be producing the strong emotions. However, in part this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of judgment most visibly and cruelly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been desiring players, praising them, drooling over them. Now, only a handful of games later, many of those very players are already being disdained as broken goods. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need their striker wise? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that he meets their rivals on Sunday: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the league and yet in their own state of perceived turmoil, like submitting a missing person’s report on someone who went to the shops 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah past his prime. The striker waste of money. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football itself, to inflect the way we watch it, an whole competition reoriented around talking points and immediate responses, something that occurs in the backdrop while we scroll through our phones, incapable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and further hot takes. Perhaps this player taking the hit right now. However, everyone is sacrificing something in this process.