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Imagine the following: a smiling the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Now, juxtapose that with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he's missed a sitter. Don't worry locating a real picture of him missing; context is the enemy. Then, add statistics in a large, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Share the image across all platforms.

Would you mention that Højlund's tally features scores in the premier European competition while his counterpart does not compete in continental tournaments? Of course not. Nor will you highlight that several of Højlund's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and generates far more scoring opportunities. If you run social media for a large outlet, pure engagement is your livelihood, United are the biggest draw, and context is your sworn enemy.

So the cycle of content turns. The next job is to scan a lengthy interview featuring Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he prefaces his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. Nobody wants that. Just ensure "strange" and "Sesko" appear together in the title. The audience will be outraged.

This Time of Potential and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my favourite times to observe football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, squads and strategies are still fresh, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the coming months are staking their claims. The summer market is closed. No one is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are in contention. Right now, anything is possible.

Yet, for similar reasons, this period has long been one of my most disliked times to read about football. For while nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is resurgent. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league right now? Please a decision immediately.

Sesko as The Prime Example

In many ways, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to withhold final conclusions, to let technical development and strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to produce permanent definitive judgment, a constant stream of opinions and jokes, context-free condemnations and pointless contrasts, a square that can never truly be circled.

It is not my aim to offer a substantive evaluation of Sesko's time at Manchester United to date. The guy has started on four occasions in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and taken a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we analysing? Nor will I attempt to duplicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits duel thrillingly on a popular show over whether he needs 10 goals to be a success this season (one pundit), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching Sesko at his former club: a powerful, screeching sports car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: afforded the freedom to attack but also the freedom to miss. Partly this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in about the time it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most ruthless gulf between the time and air he requires, and the time and air he is going to get.

We saw a case of this during the national team pause, when a widely shared chart handily stated that the player had been deemed – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the media are by no means alone 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 operating along the identical rules, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to ourselves? Do we realize, on some level, what this endless sluice of irritation is doing to our brains? Separate from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the center of this, aware on some surreal chain-reaction level that every single thing about players is now basically material, commodity, public property to be repackaged and traded.

And yes, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that keeps nourishing the cycle, a big club that must constantly be producing the strong emotions. However, partly this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of judgment most clearly and harshly observed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been desiring footballers, eulogising them, salivating over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, many of those very players are now being disdained as failures. Is it time to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need their striker wise? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that Sesko meets Liverpool on Sunday: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at home in the league and yet in their own state of feverish crisis, like filing a a report on a person who popped to the shops 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah past his prime. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. 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 inflect the way we watch it, an whole competition reoriented around discussion topics and immediate responses, an activity that happens in the background while we browse through our devices, unable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. It may be Sesko bearing the brunt at present. However, everyone is losing something in this process.