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Picture this: a happy Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Next, place it with a dejected the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, looking as if he's missed an open goal. Don't bother finding an actual photo of him missing; background information is your adversary. Now, include some goal stats in a large, comical font. Remember the emojis. Post the image across all platforms.

Would you point out that Højlund's tally features scores in the premier European competition while his counterpart isn't playing in Europe? Certainly not. Nor would you note that four of the Dane's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and creates far more chances. You manage online for a large outlet, pure interaction is what pays the bills, United are the biggest draw, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

So the cycle of content spins. Your next task is to scan a lengthy podcast featuring the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "weird". Just before, where Schmeichel prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. Nobody wants that. Simply ensure "strange" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. People 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. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, squads and strategies are still fresh, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the coming months are staking their claims. The transfer window is shut. Nobody is talking about the quadruple yet. All teams are in contention. Right now, anything is possible.

However, for many of the same reasons, this period has long been one of my most disliked times to read about football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league right now? We need an answer now.

Sesko as The Prime Example

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to withhold final conclusions, allowing technical development and strategic understanding to develop. And the imperative to produce permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, context-free condemnations and meaningless contrasts, a puzzle that can not truly be circled.

It is not my aim to offer a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. The guy has started four times in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and had a mere of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? Nor will I attempt to replicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits duel thrillingly on a podcast over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this season (Neville), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I loved watching Sesko at Leipzig: a big, screeching racing car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: afforded the license to rampage but also the freedom to miss. And in part this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most ruthless gap between the time and air he needs, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

There was a case of this during the international break, when a viral chart handily stated that Sesko had been judged – decisively – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a poll of football representatives. Naturally, the media are by no means the only ones in this. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: everybody with skin in the game is now basically operating along the same principles, an environment deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to ourselves? Are we aware, on any level, what this infinite sluice of irritation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of being a player in the center of this, aware on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that every single thing about players is now basically content, product, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, partly this is because United are United, the entity that keeps nourishing the narrative, a big club that must always be generating the strong emotions. However, partly this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of judgment most clearly and cruelly glimpsed at this time of year, about a month after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been coveting footballers, eulogising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, many of those very players are already being disdained as broken goods. Is it time to be concerned about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need their striker wise? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that he meets their rivals on Sunday: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at home in the league and somehow in their own state of feverish crisis, like filing a missing person’s report on a person who went to the store 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Their star past his prime. The striker an expensive flop. The coach losing his hair.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has started to replace football the actual game, 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 browse through our phones, unable to disconnect from the constant flow of opinions and more takes. It may be this player taking the hit at present. However, everyone is losing something here.