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Picture this: a happy the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Next, place it with a dejected the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he's missed a sitter. Don't worry locating a real picture of that miss; context is your adversary. Now, include statistics in a large, comical font. Remember the emojis. Share it everywhere.

Will you mention that Højlund's goal count includes strikes in the premier European competition while his counterpart does not compete in continental tournaments? Certainly not. And would you note that four of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that his national team is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and creates far more chances. You run social media for a major brand, raw engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and context is the thing to avoid.

Thus the cycle of online material turns. The next job is to scan a lengthy interview with Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where Schmeichel prefaces his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. No one wants that. Just ensure "strange" and "the player" appear together in the title. The audience will be outraged.

This Time of Promise and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my preferred periods to observe football. Leaves fall, winds shift, the teams and tactics are still fresh, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the coming months are planting their flags. The summer market is shut. No one is mentioning the quadruple yet. All teams are still in the game. At this precise point, anything is possible.

However, for similar reasons, this period has long been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. Because although no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league right now? Please an answer immediately.

Sesko as Patient Zero

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player caught between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to withhold definitive judgment, to let layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to develop. And the imperative to produce permanent definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of takes and memes, out-of-context condemnations and meaningless contrasts, a puzzle that can not truly be solved.

It is not my aim to offer a in-depth analysis of Sesko's stint at Manchester United so far. He has been in the lineup on four occasions 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 evaluating? And do I propose to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits duel passionately on a popular show over whether he needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this season (one pundit), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at Leipzig: a big, fast racing car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: given the license to attack but also the leeway 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 "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most pitiless gap between the time and air he requires, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

We saw a case of this during the national team pause, when a viral infographic conveniently stated that Sesko had been deemed – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a poll of 20 agents. And of course, the media are by no means alone in this. Team social media, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of fake followers: all parties with skin in the game is now basically operating along the same principles, an environment explicitly nosed towards controversy.

The Psychological Toll

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

Indeed, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that keeps nourishing the narrative, a major institution that must constantly be generating the big feelings. But also, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of judgment most clearly and cruelly observed at this season, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. All summer long we have been desiring footballers, eulogising them, drooling over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those same players are now 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 another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that he meets their rivals on Sunday: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and somehow in their own situation of feverish crisis, like submitting a a report on a person who popped to the store 30 minutes ago. Too open. Their star finished. The striker an expensive flop. The coach bald.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has started to replace football the actual game, to influence the way we watch it, an whole competition repivoted around discussion topics and reaction, an activity that happens in the background while we scroll through our phones, incapable to disconnect from the saline drip of takes and more takes. Perhaps this player bearing the brunt at present. But in a way, we're all losing a part of the experience in this process.