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Picture this: a happy Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Now, place it with a dejected Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, appearing like he just missed a sitter. Do not bother finding a real picture of that miss; background information is the enemy. Then, add statistics in a large, silly font. Don't forget the emojis. Share it across all platforms.

Would you mention that Højlund's tally includes strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko does not compete in continental tournaments? Certainly not. And would you highlight that four of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that his national team is far superior to Slovenia and creates far more chances. You manage social media for a large outlet, pure engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the prime target, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

So the wheel of content spins. The next job is to scan a 44-minute podcast with the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "weird". Just before, where Schmeichel prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. Nobody wants that. Just ensure "strange" and "the player" are paired in the title. The audience will be outraged.

This Time of Potential and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has long been one of my favourite times to watch football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, the teams and tactics are still fresh, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the season ahead are planting their flags. The transfer window is shut. Nobody is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are still in the game. Right now, anything is possible.

However, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my most disliked times to read about football. Because although no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league right now? Please a decision immediately.

The Player as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player caught between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to delay definitive judgment, allowing layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to produce permanent definitive judgment, a constant stream of opinions and jokes, context-free condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a square that can never truly be solved.

It is not my aim to provide a in-depth 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, scored two goals, and had a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we evaluating? Nor do I propose to duplicate the pundits' notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts duel passionately on a podcast over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this season (one pundit), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I loved watching Sesko at his former club: a powerful, screeching racing car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: given the freedom to rampage but also the leeway to miss. Partly this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in about the time it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most ruthless gap between the patience and space he requires, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

We saw a case of this over the international break, when a widely shared chart handily stated that the player had been deemed – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the recent market by a survey of football representatives. Naturally, the press are by no means the only ones in this. Team social media, influencers, 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 nosed towards provocation.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to us? Do we realize, on any level, what this infinite sluice of aggravation is doing to our minds? Separate from the essential weirdness of playing in the middle of it all, knowing on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that each aspect about players is now basically content, product, open-source property to be repackaged and traded.

And yes, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the cycle, a big club that must always be producing the strong emotions. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a swing of judgment most clearly and harshly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. All summer long we have been desiring players, eulogising them, salivating over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, many of those same players are now being dismissed as broken goods. Should we start to worry about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need their striker necessary? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that he meets their rivals on Sunday: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at home in the league and somehow in their own situation of feverish crisis, like submitting a a report on a person who popped to the shops 30 minutes 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 the actual game, to inflect 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, incapable to detach from the saline drip of takes and further hot takes. Perhaps this player bearing the brunt at present. But in a way, we're all losing something in this process.