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Imagine the following: a smiling the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Next, place it with a dejected Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed a sitter. Don't worry locating a real picture of that miss; background information is the enemy. Then, add some goal stats in a big, comical font. Remember some emoticons. Share the image across all platforms.

Would you point out that Højlund's tally includes strikes in the premier European competition while his counterpart isn't playing in Europe? Of course not. And will you note that several of Højlund's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Slovenia and generates many more scoring opportunities. 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 cycle of content spins. The next job is to sift through a 44-minute interview featuring Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where Schmeichel prefaces his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. No one wants that. Simply ensure "strange" and "the player" are paired in the title. The audience will be furious.

This Time of Potential and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has long been one of my favourite periods to observe football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are still fresh, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the coming months are staking their claims. The summer market is closed. No one is talking about the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are still in the game. Right now, anything is possible.

Yet, for similar 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 resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league right now? Please an answer immediately.

Sesko as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player caught between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The need to delay final conclusions, allowing layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to develop. And the imperative to generate permanent verdicts, a constant stream of takes and memes, context-free criticisms and pointless comparisons, a puzzle that can never truly be circled.

It is not my aim to offer a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's time at 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 taken a grand total of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? And do I propose to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel passionately on a podcast 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 Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching him at Leipzig: a powerful, screeching racing car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: given the license 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 about the time it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most ruthless gap between the time and air he requires, and the opportunity he is going to get.

We saw an example of this over the international break, when a widely shared infographic handily stated that Sesko had been deemed – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a survey of football representatives. Naturally, the press are not alone in such behavior. Club channels, influencers, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially operating along the same principles, an ecosystem explicitly geared for controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this endless sluice of aggravation is doing to our minds? Separate from the essential weirdness of being a player in the middle of it all, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that every single thing about players is now essentially content, product, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

And yes, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that continues to feed the cycle, a major institution that must always be generating the strong emotions. However, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of judgment most clearly and cruelly observed at this season, about a month after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been desiring footballers, praising them, drooling over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, many of those same players are now being disdained as broken goods. Should we start to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the point of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that he faces their rivals on the weekend: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the league and somehow in their own state of perceived turmoil, like filing a missing person’s report on a person who went to the store half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah past his prime. The striker an expensive flop. Arne Slot bald.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to influence the way we watch it, an whole competition repivoted around talking points and immediate responses, something that happens in the background while we browse through our phones, unable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and further hot takes. Perhaps this player bearing the brunt at present. However, everyone is sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.