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Picture this: a smiling the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Next, place that with a dejected the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Do not bother finding an actual photo of that miss; background information is the enemy. Now, include statistics in a big, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Post it everywhere.

Would you point out that Højlund's tally features strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko does not compete in Europe? Of course not. And would you note that several of the Dane's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is far superior to Slovenia and generates many more chances. If you run social media for a large outlet, raw engagement is what pays the bills, United are the biggest draw, and context is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of content turns. The next job is to sift through a 44-minute podcast with the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "strange". Just before, where Schmeichel prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. Nobody wants that. Just ensure "weird" and "the player" appear together in the headline. People will be furious.

The Season of Potential and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has long been one of my preferred periods to watch football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, squads and strategies are still fresh, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the coming months are planting their flags. The summer market is shut. Nobody is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. All teams are still in the game. Right now, all is possibility.

However, for many of the same reasons, this period has long been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. For while nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is reborn. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league right now? Please a decision immediately.

The Player as Patient Zero

In many ways, Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player caught between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to delay final conclusions, allowing technical development and strategic understanding to mature. And the imperative to generate instant verdicts, a constant stream of takes and memes, out-of-context condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a puzzle that can not truly be solved.

I do not propose to offer a in-depth analysis of Sesko's time at Manchester United so far. He has been in the lineup on four occasions in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and had a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we evaluating? And do I propose to duplicate 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 podcast over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be a success this season (one pundit), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I enjoyed watching him at his former club: a big, screeching racing car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: afforded the license to rampage but also the leeway to miss. Partly this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in roughly the duration it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most pitiless gulf between the patience and space he needs, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

We saw an example of this during the international break, when a widely shared infographic conveniently stated that the player had been judged – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a survey of 20 agents. And of course, the press are not alone in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: everybody with a vested interest is now essentially operating along the same principles, an environment deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? Do we realize, on any level, what this endless stream of irritation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of being a player in the center of it all, aware on some surreal chain-reaction level that every single thing about them is now basically content, commodity, open-source property to be repackaged and traded.

And yes, in part this is because United are United, the entity that continues to feed the narrative, a big club that must always be producing the big feelings. But also, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of judgment most visibly and harshly observed at this time of year, about a month after the window has closed. All summer long we have been desiring players, praising them, salivating over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are already being disdained as failures. Should we start to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that Sesko faces their rivals on Sunday: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at home in the league and yet in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like submitting a a report on someone who popped to the shops half an hour ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah past his prime. 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 itself, to inflect the way we watch it, an whole competition repivoted around discussion topics and immediate responses, an activity that happens in the background while we browse through our devices, incapable to detach from the constant flow of opinions and further hot takes. It may be Sesko bearing the brunt at present. However, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience here.