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Imagine the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Now, juxtapose that with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, looking as if he just missed a sitter. Don't worry finding a real picture of him missing; background information is the enemy. Then, add some goal stats in a big, comical font. Remember the emojis. Post it everywhere.

Would you mention that Højlund's tally includes strikes in the Champions League while Sesko isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. And would you highlight that four of Højlund's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that his national team is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and generates many more scoring opportunities. You manage social media for a large outlet, pure interaction is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

So the wheel of online material spins. Your next task is to sift through a 44-minute interview featuring the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he qualifies his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. Nobody needs that. Simply ensure "weird" and "the player" appear together in the headline. People will be outraged.

This Time of Promise and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has long been one of my preferred periods to watch football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are newly formed, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the season ahead are staking their claims. The summer market is closed. No one is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. All teams are still in the game. At this precise point, anything is possible.

However, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my most disliked times to read about football. Because although no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is reborn. The German talent has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league at this moment? We need a decision now.

The Player as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The need to withhold definitive judgment, to let technical development and tactical sophistication to mature. And the demand to produce permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, context-free condemnations and pointless comparisons, a puzzle that can not truly be solved.

It is not my aim to offer a in-depth analysis of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. He has started four times in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and taken a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we analysing? And will I attempt to duplicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits argue passionately on a popular show over whether he needs ten strikes to be a success this year (one pundit), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I loved watching Sesko at his former club: a powerful, fast racing car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: given the license to rampage but also the leeway to miss. 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 watch a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most pitiless gap between the time and air he needs, and the opportunity he is going to get.

We saw an example of this during the international break, when a widely shared infographic handily stated that the player had been judged – decisively – the worst signing of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the media are not the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially operating along the identical rules, an ecosystem deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to ourselves? Do we realize, on any level, what this infinite stream of aggravation is doing to our minds? Separate from the inherent strangeness of playing in the center of it all, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about players is now essentially content, product, open-source property to be packaged and exchanged.

And yes, partly this is because United are United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a major institution that must always be generating the strong emotions. But also, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of opinion most clearly and harshly glimpsed at this time of year, about a month after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been desiring footballers, eulogising them, drooling over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are now being disdained as failures. Is it time to worry about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that Sesko meets Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at home in the Premier League and yet in their own situation of feverish crisis, like submitting a a report on a person who went to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Their star past his prime. The striker an expensive flop. The coach bald.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to inflect the way we view it, an entire sport reoriented around talking points and immediate responses, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we browse through our devices, incapable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. Perhaps Sesko taking the hit at present. However, we're all sacrificing something in this process.