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Imagine this: a smiling Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Next, place it with a dejected Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, appearing like he just missed a sitter. Do not worry locating a real picture of that miss; context is your adversary. Then, add statistics in a big, silly font. Remember the emojis. Post it everywhere.

Would you mention that Højlund's goal count features strikes in the premier European competition while his counterpart does not compete in continental tournaments? Of course not. And would you note that several of the Dane's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and creates far more scoring opportunities. If you run online for a major brand, raw engagement is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and context is the thing to avoid.

So the wheel of content turns. The next job is to scan a lengthy podcast with Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where he qualifies his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. No one wants that. Simply ensure "weird" and "the player" are paired in the headline. The audience will be furious.

This Time of Potential and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has long been one of my preferred periods to observe football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, the teams and tactics are still fresh, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the coming months are planting their flags. The transfer window is closed. Nobody is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are in contention. At this precise point, anything is possible.

However, for similar reasons, this period has long been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. For while nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league right now? We need an answer immediately.

Sesko as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player caught between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The need to withhold final conclusions, to let layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to mature. And the demand to generate permanent definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, out-of-context condemnations and pointless comparisons, a puzzle that can not truly be circled.

It is not my aim to offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. The guy has been in the lineup four times in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and had a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we analysing? Nor will I attempt to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits argue thrillingly on a podcast over whether he needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this season (one pundit), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I loved watching Sesko at his former club: a big, screeching racing car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: given the license to rampage but also the freedom 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 load a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most ruthless gap between the patience and space he needs, and the time and air he is going to get.

There was an example of this over the international break, when a widely shared chart handily informed us that Sesko had been judged – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a survey of football representatives. And of course, the press are by no means the only ones in this. Club channels, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: all parties with skin in the game is now basically operating along the identical rules, an ecosystem explicitly geared for controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to us? Do we realize, on any level, what this infinite sluice of irritation is doing to our brains? Separate from the inherent strangeness of playing in the center of it all, knowing on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that every single thing about players is now basically material, commodity, public property to be repackaged and traded.

And yes, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a big club that must constantly be generating the big feelings. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of opinion most visibly and harshly observed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been desiring footballers, praising them, drooling over them. Now, just a few weeks in, many of those same players are already being dismissed as failures. Is it time to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker necessary? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that Sesko meets their rivals on Sunday: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at home in the Premier League and yet in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like filing a a report on someone who went to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Their star past his prime. Alexander Isak waste of money. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has started to replace football itself, to inflect the way we watch it, an entire sport repivoted around talking points and reaction, something that occurs in the backdrop while we browse through our devices, unable to detach from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. It may be Sesko bearing the brunt right now. But in a way, everyone is losing something in this process.