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Picture the following: a happy Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Next, place that with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, looking as if he just missed a sitter. Do not worry locating a real picture of him missing; background information is your adversary. Then, include some goal stats in a large, comical font. Remember the emojis. Post it everywhere.

Will you mention that Højlund's tally includes strikes in the premier European competition while his counterpart isn't playing in Europe? Of course not. And would you note that several of Højlund's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is far superior to Slovenia and creates far more scoring opportunities. If you run online for a major brand, raw engagement is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

So the cycle of online material spins. The next job is to sift through a lengthy podcast with the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where Schmeichel prefaces his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. No one needs that. Just make sure "strange" and "the player" are paired in the headline. The audience will be outraged.

This Time of Potential and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my favourite times to observe football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are still fresh, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the coming months are staking their claims. The summer market is shut. Nobody is mentioning the quadruple yet. Everyone are in contention. At this precise point, anything is possible.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my least favourite times to read about football. For while no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is reborn. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league at this moment? We need an answer now.

Sesko as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The need to withhold final conclusions, to let layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to develop. And the imperative to generate instant verdicts, a constant stream of opinions and memes, context-free condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a square that can not truly be solved.

It is not my aim to provide a substantive evaluation of Sesko's time at United so far. He has been in the lineup four times in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and had a mere of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? And will I attempt to replicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits argue passionately on a popular show over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this season (Neville), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I loved watching him at Leipzig: a big, screeching racing car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: given the freedom to attack but also the leeway to fail. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" 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 time and air he is likely to receive.

There was a case of this over the national team pause, when a widely shared chart conveniently stated that Sesko had been judged – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a survey of 20 agents. And of course, the media are by no means alone in this. Club channels, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: everybody with skin in the game is now essentially aligned along the identical rules, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to ourselves? Do we realize, on some level, what this infinite sluice of aggravation is doing to our brains? Separate from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the middle of it all, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that every single thing about them is now essentially content, product, public property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that continues to feed the narrative, a big club that must constantly be producing the big feelings. However, in part this is a temporary malaise, a swing of opinion most clearly and harshly glimpsed at this season, about a month after the window has closed. All summer long we have been coveting footballers, eulogising them, drooling over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are now being dismissed as broken goods. Is it time to worry about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker wise? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that he faces Liverpool on the weekend: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at home in the Premier League and somehow in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like filing a a report on a person who went to the store 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah past his prime. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to influence the way we view it, an whole competition repivoted around talking points and immediate responses, something that happens in the backdrop while we scroll through our phones, unable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and further hot takes. Perhaps this player taking the hit right now. But in a way, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience here.