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Imagine the following: a smiling the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Now, place that with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Don't bother locating an actual photo of him missing; context is your adversary. Now, include some goal stats in a large, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Post it everywhere.

Will you point out that Højlund's goal count includes strikes in the premier European competition while his counterpart does not compete in continental tournaments? Certainly not. And would you highlight that several of Højlund's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is much stronger to Slovenia and generates many more chances. You manage online for a major brand, raw engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

Thus the cycle of online material spins. Your next task is to sift through a lengthy podcast featuring the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he qualifies his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. Nobody wants that. Simply make sure "strange" and "the player" are paired in the headline. The audience will be outraged.

The Season of Potential and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has long been one of my preferred periods to watch football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, squads and strategies are newly formed, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the season ahead are staking their claims. The summer market is closed. No one is mentioning the quadruple yet. All teams are in contention. At this precise point, all is possibility.

Yet, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my least favourite times to read about football. For while nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league right now? We need an answer now.

The Player as The Prime Example

In many ways, 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, allowing layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to develop. And the demand to produce permanent definitive judgment, a constant stream of opinions and jokes, out-of-context condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a puzzle that can never truly be solved.

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, scored two goals, and had a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we analysing? Nor will I attempt to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits duel passionately on a popular show over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be a success this season (one pundit), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I enjoyed watching Sesko at Leipzig: a big, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: afforded the freedom to rampage but also the leeway to fail. Partly this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most pitiless gulf between the time and air he requires, and the time and air he is going to get.

We saw an example of this over the international break, when a widely shared infographic conveniently stated that Sesko had been judged – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a survey of 20 agents. Naturally, the media are by no means 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 aligned along the identical rules, an ecosystem deliberately nosed towards provocation.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to ourselves? Are we aware, on some level, what this endless sluice of aggravation is doing to our brains? Separate from the inherent strangeness of playing in the middle of it all, knowing on some surreal chain-reaction level that each aspect about them is now essentially content, product, public property to be repackaged and exchanged.

Indeed, in part this is because United are United, the entity that continues to feed the narrative, a major institution that must always be producing the strong emotions. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, a swing of judgment most clearly and cruelly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been desiring footballers, eulogising them, drooling over them. Now, just a few weeks in, many of those same players are now being dismissed as failures. Should we start to worry 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 he meets Liverpool on Sunday: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at home in the league and yet in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like filing a missing person’s report on a person who popped to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah past his prime. The striker waste of money. The coach losing his hair.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football itself, to influence the way we watch it, an whole competition reoriented around discussion topics and immediate responses, an activity that happens in the backdrop while we browse through our phones, incapable to disconnect from the constant flow of takes and more takes. It may be this player taking the hit right now. However, everyone is losing a part of the experience in this process.