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Imagine the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, juxtapose it with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed a sitter. Don't bother finding an actual photo of that miss; context is the enemy. Then, include statistics in a big, silly font. Don't forget some emoticons. Share it everywhere.

Would you point out that Højlund's goal count includes scores in the Champions League while his counterpart isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. And will you highlight that several of Højlund's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and generates far more chances. If you manage online for a large outlet, raw interaction is your livelihood, Manchester United are the prime target, and context is your sworn enemy.

So the cycle of online material turns. The next job is to scan a lengthy podcast featuring the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where Schmeichel qualifies his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. No one wants that. Simply make sure "strange" and "the player" are paired in the title. The audience will be furious.

This Time of Promise and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my favourite times to watch football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are newly formed, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the season ahead are planting their flags. The summer market is closed. No one is mentioning the quadruple yet. Everyone are still in the game. Right now, all is possibility.

However, for many of the same 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. The City winger is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the top performer 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 context, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The need to delay definitive judgment, to let layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to mature. And the imperative to generate permanent definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, context-free condemnations and meaningless contrasts, a square that can never truly be circled.

It is not my aim to offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's stint at United so far. The guy has started on four occasions in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and taken a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we analysing? And will I attempt to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts argue passionately on a popular show over whether he needs 10 goals to be a success this year (Neville), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at Leipzig: a powerful, fast racing car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: afforded the license to rampage but also the freedom to miss. Partly this is why 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 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 going to get.

There was a case of this over the national team pause, when a widely shared infographic handily stated that Sesko had been deemed – decisively – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a survey of 20 agents. And of course, the media are by no means the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: all parties with a vested interest is now basically operating along the same principles, an environment deliberately geared for controversy.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this endless stream of aggravation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of playing in the center of this, aware on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that each aspect about players is now essentially material, commodity, public property to be repackaged and traded.

Indeed, partly this is because United are United, the entity that continues to feed the narrative, a big club that must constantly be generating the strong emotions. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a swing of opinion most visibly and cruelly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been desiring footballers, eulogising them, drooling over them. Now, just a few weeks in, many of those very players are already being disdained as broken goods. Should we start to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that he faces Liverpool on Sunday: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and yet in their own state of feverish crisis, like submitting a missing person’s report on a person who popped to the store 30 minutes ago. Too open. Their star past his prime. The striker waste of money. Arne Slot bald.

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 entire sport repivoted around discussion topics and reaction, an activity that happens in the background while we scroll through our devices, unable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and further hot takes. Perhaps Sesko taking the hit at present. But in a way, everyone is losing something here.