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Picture the following: a happy Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, juxtapose it with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, appearing like he just missed a sitter. Do not bother locating a real picture of that miss; background information is your adversary. Then, include some goal stats in a large, comical font. Remember the emojis. Share it everywhere.

Will you point out that Højlund's tally includes scores in the premier European competition while his counterpart isn't playing in Europe? Of course not. Nor will you highlight that four of Højlund's goals were scored versus 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 engagement is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

So the wheel of online material turns. The next job is to sift through a 44-minute podcast with the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where Schmeichel qualifies his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. Nobody wants that. Just make sure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired in the headline. People will be furious.

This Time of Promise and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has long been one of my preferred times to observe football. Leaves fall, winds shift, squads and strategies are newly formed, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the season ahead are planting their flags. The summer market is closed. Nobody is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are still in the game. Right now, anything is possible.

However, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my least favourite times to read about football. For while no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is reborn. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league at this moment? We need a decision immediately.

The Player as The Prime Example

In many ways, Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player caught between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The need to delay final conclusions, allowing technical development and strategic understanding to mature. And the imperative to produce permanent definitive judgment, a constant stream of takes and jokes, context-free criticisms and pointless contrasts, a square that can never truly be circled.

It is not my aim to provide a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. He has been in the lineup on four occasions in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and had a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we analysing? And will I attempt to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel thrillingly on a popular show over whether he needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this season (Neville), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

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 freedom to attack but also the leeway to fail. And in part this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most ruthless gulf between the time and air he needs, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

There was a case of this over the international break, when a widely shared chart handily informed us that Sesko had been deemed – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the recent market by a survey of 20 agents. And of course, the press are not the only ones in this. Team social media, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: all parties with skin in the game is now basically operating along the same principles, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to us? Do we realize, on any level, what this endless sluice of aggravation is doing to our brains? Separate from the inherent strangeness of playing in the center of this, knowing on some surreal chain-reaction level that each aspect about players is now essentially material, product, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

And yes, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that continues to feed the cycle, a major institution that must constantly be producing the big feelings. However, partly this is a temporary malaise, a swing of judgment most visibly and cruelly glimpsed at this time of year, about a month after the window has closed. 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 now being disdained as failures. Should we start to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that Sesko faces Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the league and somehow in their own situation of feverish crisis, like filing a missing person’s report on someone who went to the store 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah past his prime. The striker waste of money. Arne Slot bald.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has started to replace football itself, to influence the way we view it, an entire sport reoriented around discussion topics and reaction, an activity that happens in the background while we scroll through our phones, unable to disconnect from the constant flow of takes and more takes. Perhaps this player bearing the brunt right now. But in a way, everyone is losing something in this process.