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Picture this: a smiling the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. 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 statistics in a large, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Post the image across all platforms.

Would you point out that Højlund's tally features scores in the Champions League while Sesko isn't playing in Europe? Certainly not. And will you highlight that several of Højlund's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and creates far more scoring opportunities. If you manage online for a major brand, pure engagement is your livelihood, United are the biggest draw, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the cycle of online material spins. The next job is to sift through a lengthy podcast with the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "weird". Just before, where he qualifies his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. No one wants that. Just ensure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. People will be outraged.

The Season of Potential and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has long been one of my preferred periods to observe football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are still fresh, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the season ahead are planting their flags. The summer market is closed. Nobody is mentioning the quadruple yet. Everyone are still in the game. Right now, all is possibility.

However, for many of the same reasons, this period has long been one of my most disliked times to read about football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. The German talent has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league at this moment? Please an answer immediately.

Sesko as Patient Zero

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to delay definitive judgment, to let layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to develop. And the imperative to generate instant verdicts, a constant stream of opinions and memes, out-of-context condemnations and pointless comparisons, a square that can not truly be solved.

I do not propose to offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's stint at United so far. The guy has been in the lineup on four occasions in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and taken a mere of 116 touches. What exactly are we evaluating? And will I attempt to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits argue thrillingly on a popular show over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be a success this season (one pundit), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching him at his former club: a powerful, fast racing car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: afforded the freedom to attack but also the leeway to fail. And in part this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in roughly the duration it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most pitiless gulf between the patience and space he needs, and the time and air he is going to get.

There was an example of this during the international break, when a widely shared infographic handily stated that Sesko had been judged – decisively – the worst signing of the recent market by a poll of football representatives. Naturally, the media are not the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: everybody with a vested interest is now basically aligned along the identical rules, an ecosystem explicitly geared for provocation.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to us? Are we aware, on any level, what this infinite stream of aggravation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of playing in the middle of this, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about players is now essentially content, commodity, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

Indeed, in part this is because United are United, the corpse that continues to feed the cycle, a major institution that must always be generating the big feelings. But also, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of judgment most clearly and harshly glimpsed at this season, about a month after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been desiring footballers, eulogising them, drooling over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, a lot of those same players are already being disdained as broken goods. Should we start to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need their striker necessary? What was the point of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that Sesko faces Liverpool on Sunday: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at home in the Premier League and yet in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like filing a missing person’s report on a person who went to the store 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Their star past his prime. The striker an expensive flop. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football itself, to influence the way we watch it, an whole competition repivoted around discussion topics and reaction, an activity that occurs in the background while we browse through our phones, unable to detach from the constant flow of takes and further hot takes. It may be this player bearing the brunt right now. However, everyone is sacrificing a part of the experience here.