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Picture the following: a happy Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Now, juxtapose that with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, appearing like he just missed an open goal. Don't bother finding an actual photo of that miss; background information is your adversary. Then, include some goal stats in a large, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Post it everywhere.

Would you mention that Højlund's tally includes strikes in the Champions League while his counterpart does not compete in Europe? Certainly not. Nor would you note that four of Højlund's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is much stronger to Slovenia and creates far more chances. If you run online for a major brand, raw interaction is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and context is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of content turns. Your next task is to sift through a lengthy podcast with Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "strange". Just before, where he qualifies his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. No one needs that. Just ensure "weird" and "the player" are paired in the headline. The audience will be furious.

The Season of Potential and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my preferred periods to observe football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, squads and strategies are newly formed, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the season ahead are planting their flags. The summer market is shut. No one is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are still in the game. At this precise point, anything is possible.

However, for many of the same reasons, this period has also been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. For while nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is reborn. The German talent has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league at this moment? We need a decision now.

The Player as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to withhold final conclusions, to let layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to generate permanent verdicts, a constant stream of takes and memes, out-of-context criticisms and pointless contrasts, a square that can never truly be circled.

It is not my aim to provide a substantive evaluation of Sesko's time at Manchester United so far. The guy has been in the lineup on four occasions in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and had a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we evaluating? And do I propose to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits duel thrillingly on a podcast over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be a success this year (Neville), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I enjoyed watching him at his former club: a big, screeching racing car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: afforded the freedom to rampage but also the leeway 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 about the time it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most pitiless gulf between the time and air he requires, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

There was a case of this over the international break, when a viral chart conveniently stated that the player had been deemed – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the recent market by a survey of 20 agents. Naturally, the press are not alone in such behavior. Club channels, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: everybody with a vested interest is now essentially aligned along the identical rules, an environment explicitly geared for controversy.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to us? Are we aware, on any level, what this infinite sluice of irritation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of playing in the center of this, aware on some surreal chain-reaction level that each aspect about players is now essentially content, product, open-source property to be repackaged and traded.

Indeed, in part this is because United are United, the corpse that continues to feed the narrative, a big club that must always be producing the big feelings. However, partly this is a temporary malaise, a swing of opinion most clearly and cruelly glimpsed at this time of year, about a month after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been coveting players, praising them, salivating over them. Now, only a handful of games later, many of those very players are already being disdained as failures. Should we start to worry about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that he meets Liverpool on Sunday: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the Premier League and somehow in their own situation of feverish crisis, like filing a a report on someone who went to the shops 30 minutes ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah finished. The striker waste of money. The coach losing his hair.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has started to replace football itself, to influence the way we watch it, an entire sport reoriented around discussion topics and reaction, an activity that happens in the background while we browse through our phones, incapable to detach from the constant flow of takes and more takes. It may be Sesko bearing the brunt right now. However, we're all losing something in this process.