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Imagine this: a happy Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, place it with a dejected Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, appearing like he just missed an open goal. Do not bother locating a real picture of that miss; background information is your adversary. Now, include some goal stats in a large, comical font. Remember some emoticons. Share it across all platforms.

Would you mention that Højlund's goal count includes strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko does not compete in Europe? Certainly not. Nor will you note that several of Højlund's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that Denmark is much stronger to Slovenia and creates many more scoring opportunities. You run online for a large outlet, raw interaction is your livelihood, United are the biggest draw, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

Thus the wheel of online material turns. The next job is to scan a 44-minute interview with Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "weird". Just before, where he prefaces his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. No one wants that. Simply make sure "strange" and "Sesko" appear together in the title. People will be furious.

This Time of Promise and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my preferred periods to observe football. Leaves fall, winds shift, squads and strategies are still fresh, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the coming months are staking their claims. The summer market is closed. Nobody is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are still in the game. Right now, all is possibility.

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

Sesko as The Prime Example

In many ways, Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player caught between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to delay final conclusions, allowing layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to produce permanent verdicts, a constant stream of opinions and jokes, out-of-context criticisms and pointless contrasts, a puzzle that can never truly be solved.

I do not propose to offer a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's stint at United so far. The guy has started four times in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and had a mere of 116 touches. What precisely are we analysing? Nor do I propose to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits argue thrillingly on a popular show over whether he needs 10 goals to be a success this season (one pundit), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I enjoyed watching him at Leipzig: a big, fast racing car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: afforded the freedom to attack but also the freedom to miss. And in part this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in about the time it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most pitiless gulf between the patience and space he requires, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

There was an example of this over the national team pause, when a viral chart conveniently stated that the player had been judged – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a survey of football representatives. And of course, the press are not alone in this. Team social media, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with a vested interest is now basically aligned along the identical rules, an environment deliberately geared for provocation.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to ourselves? Are we aware, on any level, what this infinite stream of irritation is doing to our brains? Separate from the essential weirdness of being a player in the center of this, knowing on a bizarre chain-reaction level that every single thing about them is now basically content, commodity, public property to be packaged and traded.

And yes, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that continues to feed the cycle, a big club that must constantly be generating the big feelings. But also, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of judgment most clearly and cruelly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been desiring players, praising them, salivating over them. Now, only a handful of games later, many of those same players are now being dismissed as failures. Should we start to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker wise? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that he faces Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the Premier League and somehow in their own situation of feverish crisis, like filing a a report on someone who popped to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah past his prime. Alexander Isak waste of money. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has started to replace football itself, to influence the way we view it, an entire sport reoriented around talking points and reaction, something that occurs in the background while we scroll through our devices, unable to disconnect from the saline drip of takes and more takes. It may be this player bearing the brunt right now. However, everyone is losing a part of the experience in this process.