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Imagine this: a smiling Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, juxtapose that with a dejected Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, appearing like he's missed a sitter. Do not bother finding a real picture of that miss; context is the enemy. Now, include some goal stats in a large, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Share the image across all platforms.

Will you point out that Højlund's tally features scores in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in continental tournaments? Of course not. Nor will you note that four of the Dane's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that Denmark is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and generates far more chances. You manage social media for a large outlet, pure interaction is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

Thus the wheel of online material spins. Your next task is to sift through a lengthy interview with Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he prefaces his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. Nobody needs that. Just ensure "weird" and "Sesko" appear together in the headline. The audience will be furious.

The Season of Promise and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my favourite periods to watch football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are still fresh, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the coming months are staking their claims. The transfer window is closed. No one is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are still in the game. Right now, all is possibility.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, this period has also been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. For while no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league at this moment? Please a decision now.

The Player as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to withhold definitive judgment, allowing layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to mature. And the demand to generate permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and memes, context-free condemnations and pointless contrasts, a square that can not truly be solved.

I do not propose to provide a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. He has been in the lineup on four occasions in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and taken a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we evaluating? And do I propose to duplicate the pundits' 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 season (one pundit), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I enjoyed watching him at his former club: a big, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: afforded the license to attack but also the freedom to miss. Partly this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in roughly the duration it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most ruthless gulf between the patience and space he needs, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

We saw an example of this during the international break, when a viral infographic handily informed us that the player had been judged – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a survey of football representatives. Naturally, the press are not the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of fake followers: all parties with skin in the game is now essentially aligned along the identical rules, an environment explicitly nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to us? Are we aware, on any level, what this infinite stream of aggravation is doing to our minds? Separate from the essential weirdness of being a player in the center of it all, knowing on some surreal butterfly-effect level that every single thing about players is now essentially material, commodity, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

Indeed, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that continues to feed the cycle, a major institution that must always be generating the big feelings. But also, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of judgment most visibly and harshly observed at this season, about a month after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been desiring players, eulogising them, drooling over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, many of those same players are already being dismissed as failures. Should we start to worry about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need their striker wise? What was the point of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that Sesko faces Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the league and somehow in their own state of feverish crisis, like filing a a report on a person who went to the shops half an hour ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah 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 itself, to inflect the way we view it, an entire sport repivoted around discussion topics and immediate responses, something that happens in the background while we browse through our phones, incapable to disconnect from the saline drip of takes and further hot takes. Perhaps Sesko taking the hit right now. However, everyone is losing a part of the experience in this process.