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Picture the following: a happy the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Next, juxtapose it with a dejected Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, appearing like he's missed a sitter. Do not worry finding a real picture of him missing; background information is your adversary. Then, add some goal stats in a large, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Share the image across all platforms.

Will you mention that Højlund's goal count includes strikes in the Champions League while Sesko does not compete in continental tournaments? Of course not. Nor would you note that four of the Dane's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Slovenia and generates many more scoring opportunities. You run social media for a major brand, pure interaction is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

Thus the wheel of online material spins. The next job is to scan a lengthy podcast featuring Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "strange". Just before, where Schmeichel qualifies his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. No one wants that. Simply ensure "strange" and "the player" appear together in the headline. People will be furious.

The Season of Promise and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has long been one of my preferred times to observe football. Leaves fall, winds shift, the teams and tactics are still fresh, all is novel 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. Everyone are still in the game. At this precise point, all is possibility.

However, for many of the same reasons, this period has long been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. Because although no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league at this moment? Please a decision now.

The Player as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player caught between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to withhold final conclusions, to let layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to mature. And the demand to produce permanent definitive judgment, a constant stream of opinions and memes, context-free criticisms and meaningless contrasts, a puzzle that can not truly be solved.

It is not my aim to provide a substantive evaluation of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. The guy has been in the lineup four times in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and had a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we analysing? Nor do I propose to replicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits argue thrillingly on a popular show over whether he needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this year (Neville), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I enjoyed watching him at Leipzig: a big, screeching sports car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: given the freedom to rampage but also the leeway to miss. And in part this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most ruthless gap between the time and air he needs, and the time and air he is going to get.

There was a case of this over the national team pause, when a widely shared infographic handily informed us that the player had been deemed – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a survey of 20 agents. And of course, the media are not alone in such behavior. Club channels, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with skin in the game is now essentially operating along the identical rules, an ecosystem deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to us? Are we aware, on any level, what this infinite stream of aggravation is doing to our brains? Separate from the essential weirdness of being a player in the middle of it all, knowing on a bizarre chain-reaction level that every single thing about them is now basically material, product, open-source property to be packaged and exchanged.

Indeed, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that continues to feed the cycle, a major institution that must constantly be producing the strong emotions. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of judgment most clearly and cruelly glimpsed at this season, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been coveting players, eulogising 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 worry about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need their striker wise? What was the point of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that he meets their rivals on the weekend: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the Premier League and yet in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like filing a missing person’s report on someone who went to the store 30 minutes ago. Too open. Their star past his prime. Alexander Isak waste of money. The coach bald.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football itself, to influence the way we watch it, an entire sport repivoted around talking points and reaction, an activity that occurs in the background while we scroll through our devices, incapable to disconnect from the saline drip of takes and more takes. Perhaps Sesko taking the hit right now. But in a way, everyone is sacrificing something here.