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Picture this: a happy Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Now, juxtapose it with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, appearing like he's missed an open goal. Do not worry locating an actual photo of him missing; background information is your adversary. Now, include some goal stats in a large, silly font. Remember the emojis. Post it everywhere.

Would you point out that Højlund's tally features scores in the premier European competition while his counterpart isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. Nor will you note that several of Højlund's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is far superior to Slovenia and generates far more chances. If you run online for a major brand, raw engagement is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

Thus the wheel of content turns. Your next task is to sift through a 44-minute interview featuring Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where Schmeichel qualifies his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. Nobody needs that. Simply make sure "strange" and "the player" appear together in the title. People will be outraged.

This Time of Potential and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has long been one of my favourite times to watch football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, the teams and tactics are newly formed, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the coming months are planting their flags. The summer market is shut. No one is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. All teams are still in the game. Right now, anything is possible.

However, for many of the same reasons, this period has long been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. For while no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is resurgent. The German talent has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league at this moment? Please a decision now.

The Player as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The need to delay final conclusions, allowing technical development and strategic understanding to mature. And the demand to generate permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of opinions and memes, context-free criticisms and pointless comparisons, a puzzle that can not truly be solved.

I do not propose to provide a in-depth analysis of Sesko's time at United so far. The guy has started four times in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and taken a mere of 116 touches. What exactly are we evaluating? And will I attempt 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 deemed successful this season (one pundit), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I enjoyed watching him at Leipzig: a powerful, fast racing car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: given the license to attack but also the leeway to fail. And in part 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 watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most ruthless gulf between the time and air he needs, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

There was a case of this over the national team pause, when a widely shared chart handily stated that Sesko had been deemed – decisively – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a survey of 20 agents. And of course, the press are not the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: all parties with skin in the game is now essentially operating along the same principles, an ecosystem explicitly geared for provocation.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to ourselves? Are we aware, on some level, what this endless stream of irritation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of playing in the center of it all, aware on some surreal chain-reaction level that each aspect about players is now essentially content, commodity, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

And yes, partly this is because United are United, the corpse that continues to feed the cycle, a big club that must always be generating the strong emotions. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of opinion most visibly and cruelly observed at this season, about a month after the window has closed. All summer long we have been desiring footballers, praising them, drooling over them. Now, just a few weeks in, many of those very players are now being dismissed as failures. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need their striker wise? What was the point of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that Sesko meets Liverpool on Sunday: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at home in the league and yet in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like filing a missing person’s report on a person who popped to the shops half an hour ago. Too open. Their star past his prime. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has started to replace football the actual game, to inflect the way we watch it, an whole competition reoriented around discussion topics and reaction, something that occurs in the background while we scroll through our devices, incapable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. It may be this player bearing the brunt right now. However, everyone is sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.