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Picture this: a smiling Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Now, place it with a dejected the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, appearing like he's missed an open goal. Don't bother finding an actual photo of him missing; context is your adversary. Now, include some goal stats in a big, silly font. Remember the emojis. Post it everywhere.

Will you point out that Højlund's goal count features strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko does not compete in Europe? Certainly not. And would you note that four of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Slovenia and generates far more chances. If you run social media for a major brand, raw engagement is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

So the cycle of online material turns. The next job is to scan a lengthy podcast featuring the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "strange". Just before, where Schmeichel qualifies his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. Nobody needs that. Just ensure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. The audience will be outraged.

This Time of Potential and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has long been one of my preferred periods to watch football. Leaves fall, winds shift, the teams and tactics are still fresh, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the season ahead are staking their claims. The summer market is shut. No one is mentioning the quadruple yet. All teams are in contention. Right now, all is possibility.

Yet, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is resurgent. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? We need an answer now.

Sesko as The Prime Example

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player caught between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The need to withhold final conclusions, to let layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to mature. And the imperative to produce instant definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, context-free condemnations and pointless comparisons, a square that can never truly be solved.

I do not propose to offer a in-depth analysis of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. The guy has started on four occasions in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and taken a grand total of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? Nor 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 thrillingly on a popular show over whether he needs 10 goals to be a success this season (Neville), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I loved watching him at his former club: a big, screeching sports car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: given the freedom to rampage but also the freedom to miss. 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 roughly the duration it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most ruthless gap between the time and air he requires, and the time and air he is going to get.

There was a case of this during the national team pause, when a widely shared chart conveniently informed us that the player had been judged – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a survey of football representatives. And of course, the media are by no means the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of fake followers: everybody with skin in the game is now essentially operating along the identical rules, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to ourselves? Do we realize, on some level, what this infinite stream of irritation is doing to our brains? Separate from the inherent strangeness of playing in the center of this, knowing on some surreal chain-reaction level that each aspect about players is now essentially material, product, public property to be packaged and traded.

And yes, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the cycle, a major institution that must always be producing the big feelings. But also, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of judgment most clearly and cruelly observed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been coveting footballers, eulogising them, drooling over them. Now, just a few weeks in, many of those very players are now being disdained as broken goods. Is it time to worry about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that he meets Liverpool on the weekend: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at home in the Premier League and yet in their own state of feverish crisis, like submitting a a report on someone who went to the store half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Their star finished. The striker an expensive flop. Arne Slot bald.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football itself, to inflect the way we view it, an whole competition repivoted around talking points and reaction, an activity that happens in the background while we browse through our phones, incapable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and further hot takes. It may be this player bearing the brunt at present. But in a way, everyone is sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.