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Picture the following: a happy Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, juxtapose it with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, looking as if he's missed a sitter. Do not worry locating an actual photo of that miss; background information is the enemy. Then, add statistics in a large, silly font. Remember the emojis. Post it everywhere.

Will you mention that Højlund's goal count features strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. And will you note that several of the Dane's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and generates far more scoring opportunities. You run social media for a large outlet, pure interaction is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and context is your sworn enemy.

So the cycle of online material spins. Your next task is to scan a 44-minute podcast featuring Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "weird". Just before, where Schmeichel prefaces his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. No one needs that. Just ensure "weird" and "Sesko" appear together in the title. People will be outraged.

This Time of Promise and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my favourite periods to watch football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are newly formed, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the season ahead are staking their claims. The transfer window is closed. Nobody is talking about the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are still in the game. Right now, all is possibility.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. Because although no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is resurgent. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league right now? We need an answer immediately.

The Player as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player caught between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to delay definitive judgment, to let layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to develop. And the imperative to produce permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, context-free condemnations and pointless comparisons, a square that can never truly be solved.

I do not propose to offer a substantive evaluation of Sesko's stint at United so far. The guy has been in the lineup four times in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and had a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we evaluating? Nor do I propose to duplicate 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 podcast over whether he needs ten strikes to be a success this season (one pundit), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at Leipzig: a powerful, fast racing car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: given the freedom to rampage but also the freedom 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 handed down in about the time it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most ruthless gap between the patience and space he needs, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

There was a case of this over the international break, when a viral chart conveniently stated that the player had been judged – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a survey of 20 agents. Naturally, the press are not alone in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially operating along the same principles, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to ourselves? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite stream of irritation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the center of this, knowing on a bizarre chain-reaction level that every single thing about players is now essentially material, commodity, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, partly this is because United are United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the cycle, a major institution that must constantly be producing the strong emotions. However, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of judgment most visibly and harshly observed at this time of year, about a month after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been coveting footballers, eulogising them, salivating over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, many of those same players are now being disdained as failures. Is it time to be concerned about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that Sesko meets Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the Premier League and somehow in their own state of perceived turmoil, like submitting a a report on someone who went to the shops 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Their star past his prime. Alexander Isak waste of money. The coach losing his hair.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football itself, to inflect the way we view it, an whole competition reoriented around talking points and reaction, an activity that happens in the background while we browse through our phones, unable to disconnect 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.