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Picture the following: a happy Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, place it with a dejected Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, appearing like he just missed a sitter. Don't bother finding a real picture of that miss; context is the enemy. Then, include statistics in a big, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Share the image across all platforms.

Will you point out that Højlund's goal count includes strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko 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 Slovenia and creates many more scoring opportunities. You manage online for a large outlet, raw interaction is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and context is your sworn enemy.

So the cycle of online material spins. The next job is to sift through a 44-minute podcast with the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where Schmeichel prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. Nobody needs that. Simply ensure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired in the headline. People will be furious.

The Season of Promise and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has long been one of my favourite times to watch football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, squads and strategies are still fresh, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the season ahead are planting their flags. The transfer window is closed. No one is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are in contention. At this precise point, all is possibility.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, this period has long been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is reborn. The German talent has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league at this moment? Please a decision immediately.

The Player as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player caught between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to delay definitive judgment, allowing technical development and strategic understanding to develop. And the imperative to generate instant definitive judgment, a constant stream of opinions and jokes, out-of-context criticisms and pointless contrasts, a square that can not truly be solved.

It is not my aim to offer a substantive evaluation of Sesko's stint at United so far. The guy has been in the lineup on four occasions in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and taken a mere of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? And will I attempt to duplicate the pundits' notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel passionately on a popular show over whether he needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this year (Neville), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I enjoyed watching him at Leipzig: a powerful, screeching racing car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: given the freedom to attack but also the leeway to miss. Partly this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in roughly the duration it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most ruthless gulf between the patience and space he requires, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

We saw a case of this during the international break, when a viral chart conveniently informed us that the player had been deemed – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of football representatives. Naturally, the media are by no means alone in this. Club channels, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with skin in the game is now essentially operating along the same principles, an environment deliberately nosed towards provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to us? Do we realize, on any level, what this infinite sluice of aggravation is doing to our minds? Separate from the inherent strangeness of playing in the center of this, knowing on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that every single thing about them is now essentially content, commodity, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

And yes, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that continues to feed the narrative, a major institution that must constantly be generating the strong emotions. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, 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 desiring footballers, eulogising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, many of those very players are now 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 Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that Sesko faces their rivals on the weekend: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at home in the league and yet in their own situation of feverish crisis, like filing a missing person’s report on someone who went to the shops 30 minutes ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah past his prime. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has started to replace football itself, to influence the way we view it, an whole competition repivoted around talking points and immediate responses, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we browse through our phones, incapable to detach from the saline drip of opinions and further hot takes. It may be this player bearing the brunt right now. But in a way, everyone is sacrificing something in this process.