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Imagine this: a smiling the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Now, juxtapose it with a dejected the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he's missed a sitter. Don't bother locating a real picture of him missing; background information is the enemy. Now, include statistics in a large, comical font. Don't forget some emoticons. Share it everywhere.

Will you point out that Højlund's goal count includes strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in continental tournaments? Of course not. And would you highlight that several of the Dane's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is much stronger to Slovenia and generates far more chances. You run online for a large outlet, pure engagement is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and context is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of online material turns. The next job is to scan a lengthy podcast with the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he prefaces his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. Nobody needs that. Simply ensure "strange" and "the player" appear together in the title. The audience will be furious.

This Time of Promise and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my preferred periods to observe football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are still fresh, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the season ahead are planting their flags. The summer market is closed. Nobody is mentioning the quadruple yet. All teams are in contention. Right now, all is possibility.

However, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. For while no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league right now? Please a decision immediately.

The Player as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player caught between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to delay final conclusions, allowing technical development and tactical sophistication to mature. And the demand to generate instant verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, context-free condemnations and pointless comparisons, a puzzle that can never truly be circled.

I do not propose to offer a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's time at United so far. The guy has started four times in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and had a grand total of 116 touches. What precisely are we evaluating? Nor will I attempt to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts argue thrillingly on a podcast over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this year (Neville), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I loved watching Sesko at his former club: a powerful, fast sports car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: given the freedom to rampage but also the freedom to fail. 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 summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most pitiless gap between the patience and space he requires, and the opportunity he is going to get.

There was an example of this during the international break, when a widely shared chart conveniently stated that Sesko had been judged – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the recent market by a survey of football representatives. Naturally, the press are not alone in this. Team social media, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: everybody with skin in the game is now essentially operating along the identical rules, an environment explicitly geared for provocation.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? Are we aware, on any level, what this infinite sluice of aggravation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of being a player in the center of this, aware on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that each aspect about them is now essentially material, product, open-source property to be repackaged and traded.

And yes, partly this is because United are United, the entity that keeps nourishing the cycle, a major institution that must constantly be generating the big feelings. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of judgment most visibly and cruelly observed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been desiring players, praising them, drooling over them. Now, only a handful of games later, many of those very players are now being dismissed as failures. Should we start to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that Sesko meets their rivals on the weekend: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at home in the Premier League and yet in their own situation of feverish crisis, like submitting a a report on a person who went to the store half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Their star past his prime. Alexander Isak waste of money. Arne Slot bald.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football itself, to influence the way we view it, an whole competition reoriented around talking points and immediate responses, an activity that happens in the backdrop while we scroll through our devices, unable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. Perhaps Sesko bearing the brunt at present. But in a way, everyone is losing a part of the experience here.