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Picture the following: a happy Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Now, place that with a dejected Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he just missed an open goal. Don't worry finding a real picture of that miss; context is your adversary. Now, include some goal stats in a large, silly font. Don't forget some emoticons. Post it everywhere.

Will you mention that Højlund's goal count includes strikes in the Champions League while his counterpart isn't playing in Europe? Certainly not. And would you note that several 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. You run social media for a major brand, raw interaction is your livelihood, United are the biggest draw, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

So the wheel of content turns. Your next task is to scan a 44-minute interview featuring the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where Schmeichel qualifies his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. Nobody needs that. Just make sure "weird" and "the player" are paired in the title. People will be outraged.

The Season of Promise and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my favourite times to observe football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are still fresh, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the season ahead are staking their claims. The transfer window is closed. Nobody is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are in contention. At this precise point, anything is possible.

However, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league right now? We need an answer now.

Sesko as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player caught between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to withhold final conclusions, to let layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to mature. And the imperative to produce instant verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, out-of-context criticisms and pointless comparisons, a puzzle that can never truly be solved.

I do not propose to provide a in-depth analysis of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. He has started on four occasions in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and taken a grand total of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? Nor will I attempt to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel passionately on a podcast over whether he needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this year (one pundit), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I enjoyed watching him at his former club: a powerful, screeching racing car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: given the license to attack but also the freedom to miss. And in part this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in roughly the duration it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most pitiless gulf between the time and air he requires, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

We saw an example of this during the national team pause, when a viral chart handily informed us that Sesko had been judged – 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. Club channels, influencers, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: everybody with skin in the game is now basically aligned along the identical rules, an ecosystem deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to ourselves? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite stream of irritation is doing to our minds? Separate from the inherent strangeness of playing in the middle of it all, aware on some surreal chain-reaction level that each aspect about them is now basically content, commodity, public property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that keeps nourishing the cycle, a big club that must always be generating the strong emotions. But also, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of judgment most visibly and cruelly observed 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, only a handful of games later, a lot of those same players are now being dismissed as broken goods. Is it time to worry about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need their striker wise? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that he meets their rivals on Sunday: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at home in the Premier League and somehow in their own state of perceived turmoil, like filing a a report on someone who went to the store 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah finished. The striker an expensive flop. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has started to replace football itself, to influence the way we watch it, an whole competition repivoted around talking points and reaction, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we scroll through our phones, incapable to detach from the constant flow of takes and further hot takes. Perhaps this player taking the hit at present. But in a way, everyone is sacrificing something in this process.