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Imagine this: a happy Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Now, place it with a dejected the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, appearing like he's missed a sitter. Do not worry locating an actual photo of that miss; context is the enemy. Now, include some goal stats in a big, comical font. Remember the emojis. Post the image across all platforms.

Would you mention that Højlund's goal count features strikes in the Champions League while his counterpart isn't playing in Europe? Certainly not. Nor would you highlight that several of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is much stronger to Slovenia and creates far more chances. You run social media for a large outlet, pure engagement is what pays the bills, United are the biggest draw, and context is your sworn enemy.

So the wheel of content turns. Your next task is to sift through a 44-minute interview featuring Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "weird". Just before, where he qualifies his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. No one needs that. Simply ensure "weird" and "the player" appear together in the title. People will be furious.

The Season of Potential and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has long been one of my preferred times to watch football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are still fresh, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the coming months are planting their flags. The summer market is closed. Nobody is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are still in the game. At this precise point, all is possibility.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, this period has also been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. Because although no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? Please an answer now.

The Player as The Prime Example

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The need to delay final conclusions, allowing technical development and tactical sophistication to mature. And the demand to produce permanent verdicts, a constant stream of opinions and jokes, context-free condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a square 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 four times in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and taken a mere of 116 touches. What precisely are we analysing? Nor will I attempt to duplicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts duel thrillingly on a podcast over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be a success this season (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I enjoyed watching him at Leipzig: a big, fast sports car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: given the freedom to attack but also the freedom to fail. And in part this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: 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 pitiless gulf between the patience and space he needs, and the opportunity he is going to get.

There was an example of this during the international break, when a viral chart conveniently informed us that Sesko had been judged – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a survey of football representatives. And of course, 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 skin in the game is now basically aligned along the identical rules, an environment deliberately geared for provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite sluice of irritation is doing to our minds? Separate from the essential weirdness of being a player in the middle of this, knowing on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that every single thing about players is now basically material, commodity, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

And yes, in part this is because United are United, the entity that keeps nourishing the cycle, a big club that must always be producing the big feelings. However, partly this is a temporary malaise, a swing of judgment most visibly and harshly observed at this season, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been desiring players, praising them, drooling over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, many of those same players are already being disdained as broken goods. Should we start to worry about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that Sesko meets their rivals on Sunday: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at home in the league and somehow in their own situation of feverish crisis, like submitting a missing person’s report on a person who went to the shops 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah finished. Alexander Isak waste of money. Arne Slot bald.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has started to replace football the actual game, to inflect the way we watch it, an whole competition reoriented around discussion topics and immediate responses, something that occurs in the backdrop while we browse through our devices, unable to detach from the saline drip of takes and more takes. It may be Sesko bearing the brunt at present. But in a way, we're all losing something here.