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Picture this: a happy Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, place it with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed a sitter. Do not bother locating an actual photo of that miss; background information is your adversary. Now, include some goal stats in a large, comical font. Don't forget some emoticons. Share it everywhere.

Would you mention that Højlund's tally includes strikes 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 came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and creates many more chances. If you manage social media for a major brand, pure interaction is your livelihood, Manchester United are the prime target, and context is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of online material turns. Your next task is to sift through a 44-minute interview featuring the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where Schmeichel qualifies his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. No one needs that. Just make sure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired in the headline. The audience will be furious.

This Time of Potential and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has long been one of my preferred periods to watch football. Leaves fall, winds shift, squads and strategies are newly formed, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the season ahead are planting their flags. The transfer window is closed. 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, mid-autumn has also been one of my most disliked times to read about football. For while nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is reborn. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league at this moment? We need a decision immediately.

The Player as Patient Zero

In many ways, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player caught between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The need to withhold definitive judgment, allowing technical development and tactical sophistication to develop. And the imperative to generate permanent definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of opinions and memes, out-of-context condemnations and pointless comparisons, a square that can never truly be circled.

It is not my aim to offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's stint at 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 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we analysing? And do I propose to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "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 season (Neville), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I enjoyed watching him at his former club: a big, fast sports car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: given the license to attack but also the leeway to fail. And in part this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the largest 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 during the international break, when a viral chart conveniently informed us that the player had been deemed – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a survey of football representatives. And of course, the media are by no means alone in this. Club channels, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: everybody with a vested interest is now essentially aligned along the same principles, an ecosystem deliberately geared for controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? Do we realize, on any level, what this endless stream of irritation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of playing in the middle of it all, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about players is now essentially material, product, public property to be repackaged and traded.

And yes, in part this is because United are United, the entity that continues to feed the narrative, a big club that must always be generating the big feelings. But also, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of opinion most clearly and cruelly observed at this season, about a month after the window has closed. All summer long we have been desiring footballers, eulogising them, drooling over them. Now, just a few weeks in, many of those very players are already being dismissed as failures. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker wise? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that he faces Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the Premier League and somehow in their own state of feverish crisis, like submitting a a report on a person who popped to the shops 30 minutes ago. Too open. Their star finished. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. The coach losing his hair.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has started to replace football the actual game, to inflect the way we view it, an whole competition reoriented around discussion topics and immediate responses, an activity that occurs in the background while we scroll through our phones, unable to detach from the constant flow of opinions and further hot takes. Perhaps this player bearing the brunt at present. However, everyone is sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.