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Picture this: a smiling Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Now, place that with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, appearing like he's missed an open goal. Do not worry finding a real picture of that miss; background information is the enemy. Then, include statistics in a big, comical font. Don't forget some emoticons. Post the image everywhere.

Will you mention that Højlund's tally features strikes in the premier European competition while his counterpart does not compete in continental tournaments? Of course not. And will you highlight that four of the Dane's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and generates many more scoring opportunities. If you manage online for a major brand, pure engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the prime target, and context is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of content spins. The next job is to sift through a lengthy interview featuring Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "weird". Just before, where he prefaces his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. Nobody needs that. Just ensure "strange" and "the player" are paired in the headline. The audience will be outraged.

This Time of Potential and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my preferred times to observe football. Leaves fall, winds shift, the teams and tactics are newly formed, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the season ahead are staking their claims. The transfer window is closed. Nobody is mentioning the quadruple yet. Everyone are in contention. Right now, anything is possible.

However, for many of the same reasons, this period has also been one of my least favourite 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. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league right now? Please a decision immediately.

The Player as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player caught between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to delay definitive judgment, allowing layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to develop. And the imperative to generate permanent definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, context-free criticisms and pointless comparisons, a puzzle that can never truly be circled.

I do not propose to offer a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's time at Manchester United to date. The guy has been in the lineup four times in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and taken a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we evaluating? And will I attempt to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts duel passionately on a podcast over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be a success this year (Neville), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I enjoyed watching him at his former club: a big, fast sports car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: afforded the freedom to attack but also the leeway to fail. Partly this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in about the time it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most ruthless gulf between the time and air he needs, and the time and air he is going to get.

There was a case of this during the international break, when a viral chart handily informed us that Sesko had been judged – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a survey of 20 agents. And of course, the press are by no means the only ones in this. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with a vested interest is now essentially aligned along the identical rules, an ecosystem deliberately geared for controversy.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to us? Do we realize, on any level, what this infinite stream of aggravation is doing to our minds? Quite apart 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 essentially material, commodity, public property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, in part this is because United are United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a big club that must always be producing the big feelings. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of judgment most clearly and cruelly observed at this season, about a month after the window has closed. All summer long we have been coveting players, praising them, drooling over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, a lot of those very players are already being dismissed as broken goods. Should we start to worry about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that he meets their rivals on the weekend: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at home in the 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 past his prime. The striker waste of money. Arne Slot bald.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to inflect the way we view it, an whole competition repivoted around discussion topics and immediate responses, something that occurs in the background while we scroll through our devices, incapable to disconnect from the constant flow of opinions and further hot takes. It may be this player taking the hit right now. However, we're all losing a part of the experience here.