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Imagine this: a happy the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Now, juxtapose it with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, appearing like he's missed a sitter. Don't bother locating an actual photo of him missing; background information is your adversary. Then, add some goal stats in a large, comical font. Don't forget some emoticons. Post it across all platforms.

Will you point out that Højlund's tally features strikes in the Champions League while his counterpart does not compete in Europe? Certainly not. And will you note 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 creates far more chances. If you run online for a major brand, raw engagement 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 scan a lengthy interview with the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "weird". Just before, where he prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. Nobody needs that. Just ensure "strange" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. People will be furious.

The Season of Potential and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my preferred periods to watch football. Leaves fall, winds shift, the teams and tactics are newly formed, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the season ahead are staking their claims. The summer market is shut. Nobody is talking about the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are still in the game. At this precise point, anything is possible.

However, for many of the same reasons, this period has long been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. For while no outcomes are decided, 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? Please an answer immediately.

The Player as Patient Zero

In many ways, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player caught between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to withhold definitive judgment, allowing technical development and strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to generate instant verdicts, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, out-of-context criticisms and pointless comparisons, a puzzle that can never truly be circled.

It is not my aim to provide a in-depth analysis of Sesko's stint at United to date. The guy has started on four occasions in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and taken a grand total of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? And do I propose to duplicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel thrillingly on a popular show over whether he needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this season (Neville), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I enjoyed watching Sesko at Leipzig: a big, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: afforded the license to rampage but also the leeway to fail. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in roughly the duration it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most ruthless gap between the time and air he requires, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

We saw an example of this over the international break, when a widely shared infographic handily informed us that the player had been deemed – decisively – the worst signing of the recent market by a poll of football representatives. Naturally, the press are not alone in this. Team social media, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially operating along the identical rules, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to ourselves? Are we aware, on some level, what this endless stream of irritation is doing to our minds? Separate from the essential weirdness of playing in the middle of it all, knowing on some surreal butterfly-effect level that each aspect about them is now essentially material, product, open-source property to be repackaged and traded.

Indeed, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that continues to feed the cycle, a major institution that must constantly be generating the strong emotions. But also, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of opinion most visibly and harshly glimpsed at this season, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been desiring footballers, eulogising them, drooling over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, many of those very players are now being dismissed as broken goods. Is it time to worry about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker wise? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that Sesko faces their rivals on the weekend: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at home in the league and yet in their own situation of feverish crisis, like filing a a report on a person who went to the store 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah finished. The striker waste of money. Arne Slot bald.

Maybe 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 watch it, an whole competition reoriented around discussion topics and reaction, an activity that happens in the background while we browse through our phones, unable to detach from the constant flow of opinions and further hot takes. Perhaps Sesko bearing the brunt right now. However, everyone is losing something here.