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Picture this: a smiling Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Now, place it with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he's missed a sitter. Don't bother finding an actual photo of that miss; context is the enemy. Now, include statistics in a big, comical font. Remember some emoticons. Post the image everywhere.

Will you mention that Højlund's goal count features scores in the premier European competition while his counterpart does not compete in continental tournaments? Certainly not. And will you highlight that four of Højlund's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and creates many more chances. If you run online for a large outlet, pure engagement is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

So the wheel of content turns. The next job is to scan a 44-minute interview featuring Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "strange". Just before, where Schmeichel prefaces his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. Nobody wants that. Just make sure "strange" and "Sesko" appear together in the title. People will be furious.

This Time of Promise and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has long been one of my preferred times to watch football. Leaves fall, winds shift, squads and strategies are newly formed, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the season ahead are staking their claims. The transfer window is shut. Nobody is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. All teams are still in the game. Right now, anything is possible.

However, for similar reasons, this period has also been one of my most disliked times to read about football. Because although no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league right now? Please a decision immediately.

The Player as Patient Zero

In many ways, Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to withhold definitive judgment, allowing technical development and tactical sophistication to mature. And the imperative to generate permanent verdicts, a constant stream of opinions and memes, out-of-context condemnations and pointless comparisons, a square that can never truly be circled.

I do not propose to provide a in-depth analysis of Sesko's time at United so far. He has started on four occasions 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 "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits argue passionately on a podcast over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be a success this season (Neville), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I enjoyed watching him at Leipzig: a powerful, screeching racing car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: given the license 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 watch a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most pitiless gap between the time and air he requires, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

We saw an example of this during the national team pause, when a viral infographic handily stated that the player had been deemed – decisively – the worst signing of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. And of course, the press are not alone in such behavior. Club channels, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: all parties with skin in the game is now basically aligned along the identical rules, an environment deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this endless sluice of aggravation is doing to our brains? Separate from the inherent strangeness of playing in the center of it all, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about them is now basically content, commodity, public property to be repackaged and exchanged.

And yes, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that continues to feed the cycle, a major institution that must always be producing the big feelings. However, partly this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of judgment most clearly and harshly observed at this season, about a month after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been desiring players, praising them, drooling over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, a lot of those very players are already being disdained as broken goods. Should we start to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that he faces Liverpool on Sunday: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at home in the Premier League and somehow in their own state of perceived turmoil, like submitting a a report on someone who went to the shops half an hour ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah finished. Alexander Isak waste of money. Arne Slot bald.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to inflect the way we view it, an entire sport reoriented around talking points and reaction, something that occurs in the background while we scroll through our phones, unable to detach 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 losing something here.