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Imagine the following: a happy Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Now, juxtapose it with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, appearing like he just missed an open goal. Do not bother locating a real picture of that miss; background information is the enemy. Then, include some goal stats in a big, silly 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 his counterpart does not compete in Europe? Certainly not. And will you highlight that several of Højlund's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that his national team is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and creates far more scoring opportunities. You run online for a large outlet, raw interaction is your livelihood, United are the biggest draw, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the cycle of content spins. Your next task is to sift through a lengthy podcast with Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where Schmeichel qualifies his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. No one wants that. Just make sure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. People will be furious.

The Season of Potential and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has long been one of my preferred times to observe football. Leaves fall, winds shift, squads and strategies are newly formed, 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. No one is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are still in the game. Right now, all is possibility.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my most disliked times to read about football. Because although no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league right now? We need an answer now.

Sesko as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The need to delay final conclusions, allowing technical development and strategic understanding to mature. And the imperative to generate permanent definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of takes and memes, out-of-context criticisms and meaningless comparisons, a square that can never truly be circled.

I do not propose to provide a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's stint at United to date. The guy has been in the lineup four times in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and taken a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we evaluating? And will I attempt to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits argue passionately on a podcast over whether he needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this season (Neville), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I loved watching Sesko at Leipzig: a powerful, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: afforded the license to rampage but also the leeway to miss. Partly this is why United feels like the most unforgiving 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 widest and most pitiless gulf between the time and air he needs, and the time and air he is going to get.

We saw a case of this over the international break, when a widely shared infographic handily informed us that the player had been deemed – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. And of course, the media are by no means the only ones in such behavior. Club channels, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with skin in the game is now essentially aligned along the identical rules, an environment deliberately geared for provocation.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to ourselves? Are we aware, on some level, what this endless sluice of aggravation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the middle of it all, knowing on some surreal chain-reaction level that each aspect about them is now basically material, commodity, public property to be repackaged and exchanged.

And yes, partly this is because United are United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a big club that must always be generating the big feelings. However, partly this is a temporary malaise, a swing of opinion most visibly and cruelly glimpsed at this season, about a month after the window has closed. All summer long we have been desiring footballers, eulogising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, many of those same players are now being dismissed as broken goods. Is it time to be concerned about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker wise? What was the point of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that Sesko faces Liverpool on Sunday: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the Premier League and yet in their own state of perceived turmoil, like submitting a a report on a person who popped to the store 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Their star finished. Alexander Isak waste of money. Arne Slot bald.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has started to replace football itself, to influence the way we watch it, an whole competition repivoted around talking points and reaction, an activity that occurs in the background while we scroll through our phones, incapable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. It may be this player taking the hit right now. But in a way, we're all losing something here.