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Picture the following: a happy Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, place it with a dejected Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, appearing like he's missed a sitter. Do not worry finding an actual photo of that miss; background information is the enemy. Now, include some goal stats in a big, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Post it across all platforms.

Would you point out that Højlund's goal count includes scores in the Champions League while his counterpart does not compete in Europe? Certainly not. Nor will you note that four of Højlund's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is much stronger to Slovenia and generates many more chances. If you run social media for a large outlet, pure engagement is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of online material spins. Your next task is to sift through a lengthy podcast featuring the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he prefaces his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. Nobody wants that. Simply make sure "weird" and "the player" are paired in the title. The audience will be furious.

This Time of Promise and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my favourite periods to observe football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, 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 transfer window is shut. No one 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 read about football. For while no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is reborn. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league right now? We need a decision now.

The Player as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player caught between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The need to delay definitive judgment, allowing layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to develop. And the imperative to produce instant definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of opinions and memes, context-free criticisms and pointless contrasts, a square 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 been in the lineup on four occasions in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and taken a mere of 116 touches. What exactly 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 duel thrillingly on a podcast over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this season (one pundit), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I enjoyed watching him at Leipzig: a powerful, fast racing car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: given the freedom to rampage but also the freedom to miss. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving 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 patience and space he needs, and the time and air he is going to get.

We saw an example of this during the national team pause, when a viral chart conveniently stated that the player had been deemed – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of football representatives. Naturally, the press are by no means the only ones in such behavior. Club channels, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: all parties with skin in the game is now essentially aligned along the same principles, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this endless stream of aggravation is doing to our brains? Separate from the inherent strangeness of playing in the center of this, knowing on some surreal butterfly-effect level that every single thing about them is now essentially material, product, open-source property to be packaged and exchanged.

And yes, partly this is because United are United, the entity that continues to feed the cycle, a big club that must always be generating the big feelings. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of opinion most clearly and cruelly glimpsed at this season, about a month after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been coveting footballers, eulogising them, drooling over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, a lot of those very players are already being disdained as failures. Should we start to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need their striker necessary? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that he faces their rivals on the weekend: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at home in the Premier League and somehow in their own situation of feverish crisis, like filing a missing person’s report on a person who went to the store half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah past his prime. The striker waste of money. The coach losing his hair.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football itself, to inflect the way we view it, an whole competition reoriented around discussion topics and reaction, an activity that happens in the background while we scroll through our devices, incapable to detach from the saline drip of takes and more takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit at present. But in a way, everyone is losing a part of the experience in this process.