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Imagine the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, place that with a dejected the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, looking as if he's missed an open goal. Do not bother finding an actual photo of that miss; background information is the enemy. Now, include some goal stats in a large, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Share it across all platforms.

Will you point out that Højlund's goal count features strikes in the Champions League while Sesko isn't playing in continental tournaments? Of course not. And would you highlight that several of the Dane's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is far superior to Slovenia and generates many more chances. If you run online for a large outlet, pure engagement is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

Thus the cycle of online material spins. Your next task is to scan a 44-minute interview featuring the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he qualifies his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. Nobody wants that. Simply ensure "strange" and "Sesko" are paired 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 periods to watch football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are still fresh, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the coming months are staking their claims. The summer market is shut. No one is talking about the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are still in the game. Right now, anything is possible.

However, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my most disliked times to read about football. For while nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league at this moment? Please an answer now.

The Player as Patient Zero

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to withhold definitive judgment, to let layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to develop. And the imperative to generate permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, context-free criticisms and pointless comparisons, a puzzle that can not truly be circled.

It is not my aim to offer 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 wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and had a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we analysing? Nor 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 he needs ten strikes to be a success this season (one pundit), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I enjoyed watching him at Leipzig: a big, fast racing car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: afforded the freedom to attack but also the leeway to miss. Partly this is why Manchester 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 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 over the national team pause, when a viral chart handily informed us that the player had been judged – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the media are by no means alone in such behavior. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: all parties with a vested interest is now basically aligned along the same principles, an environment explicitly nosed towards provocation.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to ourselves? Are we aware, on some level, what this endless stream of aggravation is doing to our minds? Separate from the inherent strangeness of playing in the center of it all, aware on some surreal chain-reaction level that every single thing about them is now basically content, product, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

Indeed, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that keeps nourishing the cycle, a major institution that must always be generating the strong emotions. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum 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 players, eulogising them, drooling over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are now being dismissed as broken goods. Should we start to worry about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker necessary? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that he meets Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at home in the league and yet in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like submitting a missing person’s report on a person who went to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Their star past his prime. The striker waste of money. Arne Slot bald.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football itself, to influence the way we watch it, an whole competition reoriented around talking points and reaction, an activity that happens in the background while we browse through our devices, incapable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and further hot takes. Perhaps Sesko taking the hit right now. However, everyone is sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.