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Picture this: a smiling Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Next, juxtapose it with a dejected 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; background information is the enemy. Now, include statistics in a big, comical font. Remember the emojis. Post the image everywhere.

Would you point out that Højlund's goal count features strikes in the premier European competition while his counterpart does not compete in Europe? Of course not. And would you highlight that several of the Dane's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is much stronger to Slovenia and generates many more chances. If you manage social media for a major brand, raw interaction is your livelihood, United are the biggest draw, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the cycle of online material turns. Your next task is to sift through a 44-minute interview with Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "weird". Just before, where Schmeichel qualifies his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. Nobody needs that. Simply ensure "weird" and "Sesko" appear together in the headline. People will be furious.

The Season of Potential and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my preferred periods to observe football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, squads and strategies are newly formed, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the coming months are staking their claims. The transfer window is shut. No one is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. All teams are in contention. Right now, anything is possible.

However, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. For while no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league right now? Please an answer immediately.

The Player as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player caught between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The need to delay definitive judgment, to let layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to mature. And the imperative to generate permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, context-free condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a puzzle that can not truly be solved.

It is not my aim to offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's stint at United to date. The guy has been in the lineup on four occasions in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and had a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we analysing? And do I propose to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts argue passionately on a podcast over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this year (one pundit), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching him at Leipzig: a powerful, screeching racing car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: given the license to attack but also the leeway 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 summarily issued in about the time it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most ruthless gap between the time and air he needs, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

We saw a case of this during the international break, when a viral infographic handily stated that Sesko had been deemed – decisively – the worst signing of the recent market by a poll of football representatives. Naturally, the press are not the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: everybody with skin in the game is now essentially operating along the identical rules, an environment deliberately geared for provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to ourselves? Do we realize, on any level, what this infinite sluice of irritation is doing to our minds? Separate from the inherent strangeness of playing in the middle of this, aware on some surreal chain-reaction level that each aspect about them is now basically material, commodity, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, partly this is because United are United, the corpse that continues to feed the cycle, a big club that must always be producing the big feelings. However, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of judgment most clearly and harshly observed at this time of year, about a month after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been desiring players, praising them, drooling over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are now being disdained as broken goods. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the point of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that Sesko faces 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 feverish crisis, like submitting a a report on someone who went to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah finished. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. The coach bald.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football itself, to inflect the way we watch it, an entire sport reoriented around discussion topics and immediate responses, something that occurs in the background while we scroll through our devices, incapable to disconnect from the constant flow of takes and further hot takes. Perhaps Sesko bearing the brunt at present. But in a way, everyone is sacrificing something in this process.