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Imagine the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Now, place it with a dejected Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he's missed an open goal. Do not bother finding a real picture of that miss; context is your adversary. Now, add some goal stats in a big, comical font. Remember some emoticons. Post the image everywhere.

Will you mention that Højlund's tally features strikes in the Champions League while his counterpart isn't playing in Europe? Of course not. And will you note that several of Højlund's goals came against Belarus and Greece, 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 engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the cycle of online material spins. Your next task is to sift through a lengthy interview with the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "strange". Just before, where Schmeichel qualifies his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. Nobody needs that. Simply make sure "weird" and "the player" appear together in the title. People will be outraged.

This Time of Promise and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn 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. The stars of the season ahead are staking their claims. The transfer window is shut. Nobody is talking about the quadruple yet. All teams are in contention. At this precise point, all is possibility.

However, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. For while nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league right now? Please an answer now.

Sesko as The Prime Example

In many ways, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to withhold final conclusions, allowing layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to develop. And the demand to generate instant definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, out-of-context condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a puzzle that can never truly be circled.

I do not propose to provide a in-depth analysis of Sesko's stint at United so far. He has been in the lineup four times in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and taken a grand total of 116 touches. What precisely are we analysing? Nor do I propose to duplicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts duel thrillingly on a popular show over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this year (one pundit), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I enjoyed watching Sesko at his former club: a powerful, screeching sports car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: afforded the freedom to rampage but also the freedom to fail. Partly 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 about the time it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most ruthless gulf between the time and air he requires, and the time and air he is going to get.

There was a case of this over the national team pause, when a widely shared infographic handily informed us that Sesko had been deemed – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a poll of football representatives. Naturally, the media are by no means alone in this. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: everybody with skin in the game is now basically operating along the same principles, an environment deliberately nosed towards provocation.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this endless sluice of aggravation is doing to our minds? Separate from the essential weirdness of playing in the center of this, knowing on a bizarre chain-reaction level that every single thing about players is now essentially content, commodity, public property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, in part this is because United are United, the corpse that continues to feed the cycle, a big club that must always be generating the big feelings. But also, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of judgment most visibly and cruelly observed at this season, about a month after the window has closed. All summer long we have been coveting footballers, eulogising them, salivating over them. Now, only a handful of games later, many of those same players are already being dismissed as broken goods. Is it time to be concerned about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that he meets Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at home in the league and yet in their own state of feverish crisis, like filing a a report on a person who went to the store 30 minutes ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah past his prime. The striker waste of money. Arne Slot bald.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football itself, to inflect the way we watch it, an whole competition reoriented around discussion topics and immediate responses, an activity that happens in the backdrop while we scroll through our phones, incapable to detach from the constant flow of opinions and more takes. Perhaps Sesko taking the hit at present. However, everyone is losing a part of the experience here.