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Imagine the following: a happy Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Next, juxtapose that with a dejected Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, looking as if he's missed an open goal. Do not bother locating a real picture of him missing; context is your adversary. Then, include statistics in a big, silly font. Don't forget some emoticons. Post the image everywhere.

Would you point out that Højlund's tally includes scores in the Champions League while his counterpart does not compete in continental tournaments? Certainly not. And will you note that several of Højlund's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and creates far more scoring opportunities. If you run social media for a large outlet, pure interaction is your livelihood, United are the biggest draw, and context is the thing to avoid.

Thus the wheel of online material turns. Your next task is to scan a 44-minute podcast featuring Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where Schmeichel qualifies his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. No one wants that. Just ensure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired in the headline. People will be furious.

This Time of Potential and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has long been one of my preferred periods to watch football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, squads and strategies are newly formed, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the season ahead are planting their flags. The summer market is closed. No one is talking about the quadruple yet. Everyone are still in the game. At this precise point, all is possibility.

Yet, for similar reasons, this period has long been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is reborn. The German talent has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league at this moment? Please an answer now.

Sesko as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player caught between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to delay final conclusions, allowing layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to develop. And the imperative to generate instant verdicts, a constant stream of opinions and jokes, context-free criticisms and pointless comparisons, a square that can not truly be circled.

It is not my aim to offer a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's time at United so far. The guy has been in the lineup on four occasions in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and had a grand total of 116 touches. What precisely are we evaluating? Nor will I attempt to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits duel thrillingly on a popular show over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this season (one pundit), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I loved watching him at Leipzig: a powerful, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: given the freedom to rampage but also the leeway to fail. And in part this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most ruthless gulf between the time and air he needs, and the opportunity he is going to get.

There was a case of this over the international break, when a widely shared chart handily informed us that the player had been judged – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the recent market by a survey of 20 agents. And of course, the press are not alone in such behavior. Club channels, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: everybody with skin in the game is now essentially operating along the same principles, an environment explicitly nosed towards controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this endless sluice of irritation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of playing in the middle of this, knowing on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that every single thing about players is now basically content, commodity, public property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that continues to feed the narrative, a big club that must constantly be producing the strong emotions. However, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of opinion most visibly and cruelly observed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been desiring players, eulogising them, drooling over them. Now, only a handful of games later, many of those very players are now being disdained as failures. Is it time to worry about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that Sesko meets their rivals on Sunday: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at home in the Premier League and yet in their own state of feverish crisis, like filing a missing person’s report on someone who went to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Their star past his prime. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. Arne Slot bald.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has started to replace football itself, to inflect the way we watch it, an whole competition reoriented around talking points and reaction, something that happens in the background while we scroll through our devices, unable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. It may be this player bearing the brunt at present. However, everyone is sacrificing something in this process.