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Imagine the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Now, juxtapose that with a dejected Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, appearing like he just missed an open goal. Don't bother locating a real picture of that miss; background information is the enemy. Then, include some goal stats in a big, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Post the image across all platforms.

Would you mention that Højlund's tally features strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko does not compete in continental tournaments? Of course not. Nor would you note that four of the Dane's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is much stronger to Slovenia and generates many more chances. You manage online for a large outlet, raw interaction is your livelihood, Manchester United are the prime target, and context is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of online material spins. Your next task is to sift through a lengthy podcast with Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where he prefaces his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. No one needs that. Just ensure "strange" and "Sesko" appear together in the title. The audience will be furious.

The Season of Promise and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has long been one of my favourite periods to observe football. Leaves fall, winds shift, the teams and tactics are newly formed, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the coming months are planting their flags. The summer market is shut. No one is talking about the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are still in the game. At this precise point, anything is possible.

Yet, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my least favourite 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 crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league right now? We need a decision now.

The Player as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The need to withhold final conclusions, to let technical development and tactical sophistication to develop. And the imperative to generate instant verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, context-free condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a puzzle that can not truly be circled.

It is not my aim to provide a in-depth analysis of Sesko's time at Manchester United so far. He has started four times in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and had a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we analysing? Nor do I propose to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts duel thrillingly on a podcast over whether he needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this season (one pundit), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching Sesko at Leipzig: a big, fast racing car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: afforded the license to attack but also the leeway to miss. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in about the time it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most ruthless gulf between the time and air he needs, and the opportunity he is going to get.

There was a case of this over the international break, when a viral chart handily informed us that Sesko had been deemed – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the press are not the only ones in this. Club channels, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with skin in the game is now essentially operating along the identical rules, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to ourselves? Are we aware, on any level, what this endless sluice of aggravation is doing to our brains? Separate from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the middle of this, knowing on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that every single thing about players is now essentially content, product, open-source property to be repackaged and traded.

And yes, partly this is because United are United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a big club that must constantly be generating the big feelings. But also, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of opinion most visibly and harshly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been desiring footballers, praising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those same players are already being dismissed as failures. Should we start to worry about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that Sesko faces Liverpool on Sunday: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at home in the league and yet in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like filing a a report on a person who popped to the shops 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Their star finished. The striker waste of money. The coach bald.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has started to replace football itself, to inflect the way we watch it, an whole competition reoriented around talking points and reaction, something that occurs in the backdrop while we browse through our phones, unable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. It may be this player taking the hit right now. However, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience here.