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Picture the following: a happy the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Next, place that with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, appearing like he's missed a sitter. Don't bother finding an actual photo of that miss; context is the enemy. Now, add statistics in a big, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Post it everywhere.

Will you mention that Højlund's goal count includes strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in Europe? Certainly not. And will you highlight that several of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that his national team is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and generates many more scoring opportunities. If you run online for a large outlet, raw interaction is your livelihood, Manchester United are the prime target, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

So the cycle of content spins. Your next task is to scan a lengthy podcast with the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where Schmeichel prefaces his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. No one needs that. Simply make sure "weird" and "Sesko" appear together in the headline. The audience will be outraged.

The Season of Promise and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has long been one of my favourite times to observe football. Leaves fall, winds shift, squads and strategies 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 mentioning the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are still in the game. Right now, anything is possible.

However, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my most disliked times to read about football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is reborn. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league at this moment? We need a decision immediately.

Sesko as Patient Zero

In many ways, Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to delay final conclusions, to let technical development and strategic understanding to mature. And the demand to generate instant definitive judgment, a constant stream of opinions and jokes, context-free condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a square that can never truly be solved.

It is not my aim to offer a substantive evaluation of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. He has started four times in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and had a grand total of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? And do I propose to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel thrillingly on a podcast over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this season (one pundit), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I loved watching him at his former club: a powerful, screeching sports car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: afforded the freedom to rampage but also the freedom to miss. And in part this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in about the time it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most pitiless gulf between the patience and space he needs, and the opportunity he is going to get.

There was an example of this during the national team pause, when a widely shared infographic conveniently informed us that the player had been deemed – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. And of course, the press are not the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with a vested interest is now basically operating along the same principles, an ecosystem deliberately geared for controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to us? Do we realize, on some level, what this infinite sluice of irritation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the middle of it all, aware on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that each aspect about players is now essentially material, product, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

And yes, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the cycle, a major institution that must constantly be generating the strong emotions. However, partly this is a temporary malaise, a swing of judgment most clearly and harshly observed at this season, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been coveting players, praising them, drooling over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are already being disdained as failures. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need their striker wise? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that Sesko faces Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the Premier League and yet in their own situation of feverish crisis, like filing a missing person’s report on a person who popped to the store 30 minutes ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah finished. The striker an expensive flop. The coach losing his hair.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football itself, to inflect the way we watch it, an whole competition repivoted around discussion topics and reaction, an activity that occurs in the background while we browse through our phones, incapable to detach from the constant flow of opinions and further hot takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit right now. However, everyone is losing a part of the experience in this process.