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Imagine the following: a smiling the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Now, juxtapose it with a dejected Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he just missed a sitter. Don't bother finding a real picture of him missing; context is your adversary. Now, include statistics in a large, comical font. Remember the emojis. Post the image across all platforms.

Would you point out that Højlund's goal count features scores in the premier European competition while Sesko does not compete in Europe? Certainly not. And will you note that several of the Dane's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, 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 prime target, and context is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of online material turns. The next job is to sift through a 44-minute podcast featuring the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where he prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. Nobody wants that. Just ensure "weird" and "the player" appear together in the title. The audience will be furious.

The Season of Promise and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has long been one of my preferred times to observe football. Leaves fall, winds shift, the teams and tactics are still fresh, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the season ahead are staking their claims. The transfer window is closed. No one is talking about the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are still in the game. Right now, all is possibility.

However, for similar reasons, this period has also been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. For while nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is reborn. The German talent has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league right now? We need a decision now.

The Player as The Prime Example

In many ways, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to delay definitive judgment, allowing technical development and tactical sophistication to mature. And the demand to generate permanent definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, out-of-context condemnations and meaningless contrasts, a square that can not truly be circled.

It is not my aim to offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's time at Manchester United to date. He has been in the lineup on four occasions in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and had a grand total of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? Nor will I attempt to duplicate 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 he needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this year (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching Sesko at his former club: a powerful, fast sports car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: afforded the freedom to attack but also the freedom to fail. Partly this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in roughly the duration it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most ruthless gulf between the patience and space he needs, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

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 worst signing of the summer transfer window by a survey of 20 agents. And of course, the media are by no means the only ones in such behavior. Club channels, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: all parties with a vested interest is now basically operating along the same principles, an environment explicitly nosed towards provocation.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to ourselves? Are we aware, on any level, what this infinite stream of irritation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of being a player in the center of it all, knowing on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that every single thing about players is now basically material, product, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

Indeed, in part this is because United are United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the cycle, a big club that must always be generating the strong emotions. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, a swing of judgment most visibly and harshly 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. Yet, only a handful of games later, a lot of those very players are already being disdained as failures. Is it time to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker wise? What was the point of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that he meets their rivals on Sunday: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and yet in their own state of perceived turmoil, like submitting a missing person’s report on someone who went to the store half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah past his prime. The striker waste of money. 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 view it, an whole competition repivoted around discussion topics and reaction, an activity that happens in the background while we scroll through our phones, unable to detach from the constant flow of opinions and further hot takes. Perhaps Sesko bearing the brunt right now. However, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.