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Picture the following: a smiling the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Next, juxtapose that with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he's missed a sitter. Do not bother locating a real picture of him missing; context is your adversary. Now, add some goal stats in a big, comical font. Don't forget some emoticons. Share the image everywhere.

Will you mention that Højlund's tally features scores in the Champions League while his counterpart does not compete in Europe? Of course not. Nor will you highlight that several of the Dane's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that his national team is far superior to Slovenia and generates far more scoring opportunities. You run social media for a major brand, raw engagement is your livelihood, United are the biggest draw, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

So the wheel of online material spins. The next job is to scan a lengthy podcast with the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he qualifies his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. No one wants that. Simply make sure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired in the headline. People will be outraged.

The Season of Potential and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my favourite periods to watch football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, the teams and tactics are still fresh, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the season ahead are planting their flags. The summer market is shut. No one is mentioning the quadruple yet. Everyone are in contention. Right now, all is possibility.

However, for many of the same reasons, this period has also been one of my most disliked times to read about football. For while nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is reborn. The German talent has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league right now? Please a decision now.

The Player as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player caught between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to withhold definitive judgment, to let layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to develop. And the demand to produce permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, context-free criticisms and pointless comparisons, a puzzle that can not truly be solved.

I do not propose to provide a substantive analysis of Sesko's stint at Manchester United so far. The guy has been in the lineup four times in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and taken a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we analysing? And do I propose to duplicate the pundits' notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel thrillingly on a podcast over whether he needs ten strikes to be a success this year (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

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 talents: given the license to rampage but also the freedom to miss. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most ruthless gap between the time and air he requires, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

We saw a case of this over the national team pause, when a widely shared chart conveniently stated that Sesko had been deemed – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the recent market by a poll of football representatives. Naturally, the media are not alone in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with skin in the game is now essentially aligned along the same principles, an ecosystem explicitly geared for provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to us? Do we realize, on any level, what this endless stream of aggravation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the middle of it all, aware on some surreal butterfly-effect level that every single thing about players is now essentially material, product, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

And yes, partly this is because United are United, the entity that keeps nourishing the narrative, a major institution that must constantly be producing the strong emotions. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of opinion most clearly and harshly glimpsed at this time of year, about a month after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been desiring players, eulogising them, drooling over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, a lot of those same players are now being disdained as broken goods. Is it time to be concerned about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker wise? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that Sesko meets their rivals on Sunday: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the league and somehow in their own state of perceived turmoil, like submitting a a report on a person who went to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah finished. The striker an expensive flop. Arne Slot bald.

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 watch it, an entire sport reoriented around talking points and immediate responses, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we scroll through our devices, unable to detach from the constant flow of takes and further hot takes. It may be Sesko bearing the brunt at present. However, we're all losing a part of the experience here.