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Imagine this: a happy Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, juxtapose it with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Don't worry finding an actual photo of him missing; background information is your adversary. Now, add some goal stats in a large, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Post it everywhere.

Would you mention that Højlund's goal count includes strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko does not compete in Europe? Of course not. Nor will you note that four of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and generates far more scoring opportunities. If you run social media for a major brand, raw engagement is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

Thus the cycle of online material turns. Your next task is to sift through a 44-minute podcast featuring the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he qualifies his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. Nobody wants that. Simply make sure "weird" and "the player" appear together in the headline. People will be outraged.

The Season of Potential and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has long been one of my preferred periods to watch football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are still fresh, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the coming months are staking their claims. The summer market is closed. Nobody is talking about the quadruple yet. Everyone are in contention. At this precise point, anything is possible.

Yet, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. Because although no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league at this moment? Please a decision now.

Sesko as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player caught between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to withhold final conclusions, to let layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to mature. And the demand to generate instant verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and memes, out-of-context criticisms and meaningless contrasts, a square that can never truly be solved.

I do not propose to offer a in-depth analysis of Sesko's time at United so far. He has started four times in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and taken a mere of 116 touches. What precisely are we analysing? Nor will I attempt to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits argue thrillingly on a popular show over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be a success this year (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I loved 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 freedom to attack but also the leeway to fail. And in part this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most pitiless gap between the time and air he needs, and the opportunity he is going to get.

There was an example of this over the international break, when a widely shared chart handily stated that the player had been judged – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the media are by no means alone in this. Team social media, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: all parties with skin in the game is now basically operating along the same principles, an environment deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to ourselves? Do we realize, on some level, what this endless sluice of aggravation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of playing in the middle of it all, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about players is now basically material, product, public property to be repackaged and traded.

Indeed, partly this is because United are United, the entity that continues to feed the cycle, a big club that must constantly be generating the big feelings. But also, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of judgment most visibly and cruelly glimpsed at this season, roughly four weeks 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, many of those same players are already being dismissed as broken goods. Should we start to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need their striker wise? What was the point of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that Sesko meets Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at home in the league and somehow in their own state of feverish crisis, like submitting a missing person’s report on someone who went to the store 30 minutes ago. Too open. Their star finished. Alexander Isak waste of money. Arne Slot bald.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has started to replace football itself, to inflect the way we view it, an whole competition repivoted around talking points and reaction, something that happens in the backdrop while we scroll through our phones, incapable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit right now. But in a way, we're all losing something here.