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Picture this: a happy the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Next, juxtapose it with a dejected the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, appearing like he's missed an open goal. Do not worry finding an actual photo of him missing; background information is your adversary. Now, include some goal stats in a big, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Share the image everywhere.

Will you point out that Højlund's goal count includes strikes in the Champions League while his counterpart does not compete in Europe? Of course not. And will you note that four of the Dane's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is much stronger to Slovenia and generates far more chances. If you run online for a major brand, pure engagement is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the cycle of online material turns. Your next task is to sift through a 44-minute podcast with the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where Schmeichel qualifies his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. No one wants that. Just ensure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired in the headline. The audience will be furious.

This Time of Potential and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my preferred periods to observe football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are newly formed, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the coming months are staking their claims. The summer market is closed. No one is mentioning the quadruple yet. Everyone are still in the game. Right now, anything is possible.

However, 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. The City winger is resurgent. The German talent has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league right now? We need a decision now.

Sesko as Patient Zero

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The need to delay final conclusions, allowing layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to mature. And the imperative to generate permanent definitive judgment, a constant stream of opinions and memes, context-free condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a puzzle that can never truly be circled.

I do not propose to offer a in-depth analysis of Sesko's time at Manchester United so far. The guy has started four times in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and taken a grand total of 116 touches. What exactly are we evaluating? And do I propose to replicate the pundits' notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits argue passionately on a podcast over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this year (Neville), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I enjoyed watching him at his former club: a powerful, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: afforded the license to attack but also the leeway to miss. And in part this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in roughly the duration it takes to watch 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 national team pause, when a widely shared infographic conveniently stated that Sesko had been deemed – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a survey of football representatives. And of course, the media are not the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with skin in the game is now basically aligned along the same principles, an environment explicitly geared for controversy.

The Psychological Toll

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 inherent strangeness of playing in the middle of it all, aware on some surreal butterfly-effect level that every single thing about players is now essentially material, commodity, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

And yes, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that keeps nourishing the narrative, a major institution that must always be generating the big feelings. However, in part this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of opinion most clearly and cruelly observed at this time of year, about a month after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been coveting footballers, praising them, drooling over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, many of those same players are now being dismissed as failures. Is it time to be concerned about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that Sesko faces Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at home in the Premier League and somehow in their own situation of feverish crisis, like filing a missing person’s report on someone who went to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah finished. The striker an expensive flop. The coach losing his hair.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has started to replace football the actual game, to inflect the way we watch it, an whole competition reoriented around discussion topics and immediate responses, an activity that happens in the backdrop while we scroll through our phones, incapable to detach from the constant flow of takes and further hot takes. Perhaps this player bearing the brunt right now. However, everyone is sacrificing something here.