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Imagine the following: a smiling the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Now, juxtapose it with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he's missed an open goal. Don't bother locating a real picture of that miss; background information is your adversary. Now, include statistics in a big, comical font. Remember the emojis. Share it across all platforms.

Would you point out that Højlund's tally includes scores in the Champions League while Sesko does not compete in continental tournaments? Certainly not. And would you highlight that four of the Dane's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that Denmark is much stronger to Slovenia and creates far more scoring opportunities. If you manage online for a major brand, raw interaction is what pays the bills, United are the biggest draw, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of online material spins. Your next task is to sift through a 44-minute podcast with the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where he prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. No one wants that. Simply make sure "strange" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. The audience will be furious.

The Season of Promise and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has long been one of my favourite periods to watch football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, squads and strategies are newly formed, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the season ahead are staking their claims. The summer market is shut. Nobody is mentioning the quadruple yet. All teams are in contention. At this precise point, anything is possible.

Yet, 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. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? Please a decision now.

Sesko as The Prime Example

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player caught between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to delay final conclusions, to let technical development and strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to produce permanent definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, out-of-context condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a square that can never truly be solved.

It is not my aim to offer a in-depth analysis of Sesko's stint 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 exactly are we evaluating? And do I propose to duplicate the pundits' notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits duel thrillingly on a podcast over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be a success this season (Neville), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I enjoyed watching him at Leipzig: a powerful, fast sports car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: afforded the license to attack but also the leeway to fail. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in about the time it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most pitiless gap between the patience and space he needs, and the opportunity he is going to get.

We saw a case of this during the national team pause, when a widely shared chart conveniently informed us that Sesko had been judged – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a survey of 20 agents. Naturally, the press are by no means the only ones in such behavior. Club channels, influencers, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: all parties with a vested interest is now basically operating along the identical rules, an environment deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to us? Do we realize, on some level, what this infinite stream of aggravation is doing to our brains? Separate from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the middle of this, knowing on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that each aspect about players is now essentially material, commodity, public property to be packaged and exchanged.

Indeed, partly this is because United are United, the entity that keeps nourishing the narrative, a big club that must constantly be producing the big feelings. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of opinion most clearly and cruelly observed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been coveting players, eulogising them, drooling over them. Now, just a few weeks in, many of those very 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 feels appropriate that Sesko faces Liverpool on the weekend: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and yet in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like filing a a report on a person who went to the shops 30 minutes ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah past his prime. The striker waste of money. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has started to replace football itself, to influence the way we watch it, an whole competition repivoted around talking points and reaction, something that occurs in the background while we scroll through our devices, unable to disconnect from the saline drip of takes and further hot takes. Perhaps this player taking the hit at present. However, everyone is losing something here.