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Picture this: a happy Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Now, juxtapose it with a dejected Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Don't bother finding a real picture of that miss; background information is your adversary. Now, include some goal stats in a big, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Share the image everywhere.

Would you mention that Højlund's goal count includes strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko does not compete in continental tournaments? Certainly not. Nor will you highlight that four of the Dane's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is far superior to Slovenia and creates far more chances. If you run online for a major brand, pure interaction is what pays the bills, United are the biggest draw, and context is your sworn enemy.

Thus the cycle of content spins. The next job is to scan a 44-minute podcast featuring Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "strange". Just before, where he qualifies his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. Nobody wants that. Simply ensure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired in the headline. People will be outraged.

This Time of Potential and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my favourite periods to watch football. Leaves fall, winds shift, squads and strategies are newly formed, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the coming months are staking their claims. The summer market is closed. Nobody is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. All teams are in contention. At this precise point, anything is possible.

However, for similar reasons, this period has long been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. For while nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is resurgent. The German talent has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league right now? We need a decision now.

The Player as Patient Zero

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to withhold definitive judgment, to let layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to mature. And the demand to generate permanent definitive judgment, a constant stream of takes and memes, context-free condemnations and pointless contrasts, a square that can never truly be solved.

It is not my aim to offer a in-depth analysis of Sesko's time at United to date. The guy has started on four occasions in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and taken a mere of 116 touches. What precisely are we evaluating? And do I propose to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts argue thrillingly on a podcast over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be a success this year (Neville), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I enjoyed watching him at Leipzig: a powerful, fast racing car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: given the freedom to rampage but also the freedom to miss. Partly this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in roughly the duration it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most ruthless gulf between the patience and space he requires, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

There was a case of this over the national team pause, when a viral chart handily informed us that Sesko had been judged – decisively – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a poll of football representatives. And of course, the media are not alone in this. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of fake followers: everybody with skin in the game is now basically aligned along the identical rules, an environment explicitly nosed towards provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to ourselves? Are we aware, on any level, what this infinite sluice of irritation is doing to our brains? Separate from the essential weirdness of being a player in the center of it all, knowing on a bizarre chain-reaction level that every single thing about players is now essentially material, commodity, open-source property to be packaged and exchanged.

And yes, partly this is because United are United, the entity that keeps nourishing the narrative, a major institution that must always be producing the big feelings. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of judgment most clearly and harshly glimpsed at this season, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. All summer long we have been coveting players, eulogising them, drooling over them. Now, just a few weeks in, many of those same players are already being disdained as failures. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the point of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that Sesko meets Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and somehow in their own state of feverish crisis, like filing a missing person’s report on someone who popped to the store 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Their star past his prime. The striker waste of money. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has started to replace football the actual game, to influence the way we view it, an whole competition reoriented around discussion topics and immediate responses, something that happens in the background while we browse through our phones, unable to detach from the constant flow of takes and further hot takes. Perhaps Sesko bearing the brunt right now. However, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.