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Picture the following: a happy the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Now, place that with a dejected Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he's missed a sitter. Do not bother finding an actual photo of that miss; context is the enemy. Then, include statistics in a large, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Share the image everywhere.

Will you mention that Højlund's tally features scores in the premier European competition while Sesko does not compete in Europe? Certainly not. Nor will you highlight that several of Højlund's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and generates far more scoring opportunities. If you manage social media for a major brand, raw engagement is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and context is your sworn enemy.

So the wheel of content spins. Your next task is to scan a 44-minute interview with the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he qualifies his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. Nobody wants that. Just make sure "strange" and "Sesko" appear together in the headline. The audience will be furious.

The Season of Promise and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my favourite times to observe football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, squads and strategies are newly formed, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the coming months are staking their claims. The transfer window is shut. Nobody is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are still in the game. Right now, all is possibility.

Yet, for similar reasons, this period has long been one of my least favourite times to read about football. For while no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is resurgent. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league right now? We need an answer immediately.

Sesko as The Prime Example

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to withhold definitive judgment, to let layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to mature. And the demand to produce instant verdicts, a constant stream of opinions and memes, context-free condemnations and pointless comparisons, a puzzle that can not truly be circled.

I do not propose to offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's time at Manchester United to date. He has started four times in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and taken a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we evaluating? And do I propose to duplicate the pundits' notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts argue thrillingly on a podcast over whether he needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this season (Neville), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I enjoyed watching him at Leipzig: a powerful, screeching sports car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: afforded the license to rampage but also the freedom to fail. And in part this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most ruthless gulf between the patience and space he needs, and the time and air he is going to get.

We saw an example of this during the international break, when a viral infographic handily stated that the player had been deemed – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a survey of 20 agents. Naturally, the press are not the only ones in this. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: all parties with skin in the game is now essentially operating along the identical rules, an environment explicitly nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to ourselves? Are we aware, on any level, what this endless sluice of aggravation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the center of this, knowing on some surreal chain-reaction level that every single thing about them is now essentially material, commodity, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the cycle, a major institution that must always be generating the strong emotions. But also, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of opinion most visibly and harshly observed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been coveting players, eulogising them, salivating over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, many of those very players are already being dismissed as broken goods. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that Sesko meets Liverpool on Sunday: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at home in the Premier League and somehow in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like submitting a missing person’s report on someone who popped to the store half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Their star finished. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. The coach bald.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has started to replace football the actual game, to inflect the way we view it, an whole competition reoriented 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, everyone is losing something here.