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Picture this: a happy Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, place it with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he's missed a sitter. Do not bother locating an actual photo of that miss; context is the enemy. Then, add some goal stats in a large, comical font. Don't forget some emoticons. Post it across all platforms.

Will you mention that Højlund's goal count includes scores in the Champions League while Sesko isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. Nor would you highlight that four of the Dane's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that his national team is far superior to Slovenia and generates many more scoring opportunities. You run social media for a large outlet, pure interaction is what pays the bills, United are the biggest draw, and context is the thing to avoid.

So the wheel of online material spins. Your next task is to sift through a 44-minute interview with the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "strange". Just before, where he qualifies his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. No one wants that. Simply ensure "strange" and "Sesko" appear together in the headline. The audience will be outraged.

The Season of Promise and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my preferred periods to observe football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, squads and strategies are newly formed, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the coming months are planting their flags. The summer market is closed. Nobody is mentioning the quadruple yet. Everyone are still in the game. At this precise point, all is possibility.

However, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. For while nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league at this moment? We need a decision immediately.

The Player as Patient Zero

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to delay definitive judgment, allowing technical development and tactical sophistication to mature. And the imperative to produce permanent definitive judgment, a constant stream of takes and memes, out-of-context criticisms and pointless comparisons, a puzzle that can not truly be solved.

I do not propose to provide a substantive evaluation of Sesko's stint at United to date. The guy has started on four occasions in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and taken a grand total of 116 touches. What precisely are we analysing? Nor do I propose to replicate the pundits' notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel thrillingly on a podcast over whether he needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this year (one pundit), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I enjoyed watching Sesko at Leipzig: a powerful, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: afforded the freedom to rampage but also the freedom to miss. Partly this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued 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 requires, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

There was an example of this over the international break, when a viral chart conveniently informed us that Sesko had been deemed – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. And of course, the press are by no means the only ones in this. Club channels, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of fake followers: all parties with skin in the game is now basically aligned along the identical rules, an ecosystem deliberately geared for provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to ourselves? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite stream of aggravation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the middle of it all, aware on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that every single thing about players is now basically content, commodity, public property to be repackaged and exchanged.

Indeed, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse 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 opinion most visibly and harshly observed at this time of year, about a month after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been coveting footballers, eulogising them, drooling 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 a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker wise? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that Sesko meets their rivals on the weekend: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the league and somehow in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like submitting a a report on a person who popped to the store half an hour ago. Too open. Their star past his prime. Alexander Isak waste of money. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to influence the way we watch it, an whole competition reoriented around discussion topics and immediate responses, something that happens in the background while we scroll through our phones, incapable to disconnect from the constant flow of takes and further hot takes. Perhaps Sesko taking the hit right now. But in a way, we're all losing a part of the experience in this process.