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Imagine this: a happy Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, juxtapose that with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he just missed a sitter. Don't bother finding an actual photo of that miss; context is the enemy. Now, add statistics in a big, silly font. Don't forget some emoticons. Share it across all platforms.

Would you point out that Højlund's tally features strikes in the Champions League while Sesko does not compete in Europe? Of course not. Nor would you note that several of the Dane's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is much stronger to Slovenia and creates far more chances. If you run online for a large outlet, raw engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the prime target, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

Thus the wheel of content spins. Your next task is to scan a lengthy interview featuring Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where Schmeichel prefaces his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. Nobody needs that. Just ensure "weird" and "Sesko" appear together in the title. People will be furious.

This Time of Promise and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has long been one of my favourite times to observe football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, squads and strategies are newly formed, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the coming months are staking their claims. The transfer window is shut. No one is talking about the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are still in the game. At this precise point, anything is possible.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, this period has long been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. For while nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league at this moment? Please an answer immediately.

Sesko as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to withhold final conclusions, allowing layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to mature. And the demand to generate instant verdicts, a constant stream of takes and memes, out-of-context criticisms and pointless comparisons, a puzzle that can not truly be solved.

It is not my aim to provide a substantive evaluation of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. The guy has been in the lineup four times in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and had a mere of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? And do I propose to replicate the pundits' notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits argue passionately on a podcast over whether he needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this season (one pundit), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I enjoyed watching him at Leipzig: a big, screeching sports car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: given the freedom to attack but also the leeway to fail. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in roughly the duration it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most ruthless gap between the patience and space he needs, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

There was an example of this during the international break, when a widely shared infographic conveniently informed us that Sesko had been judged – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a poll of football representatives. Naturally, the media are by no means alone in such behavior. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: all parties with a vested interest is now basically aligned along the same principles, an environment explicitly nosed towards provocation.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to us? Are we aware, on any level, what this endless sluice of aggravation is doing to our minds? Separate from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the center of this, knowing on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that each aspect about them is now basically material, commodity, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

Indeed, partly this is because United are United, the corpse that continues to feed the cycle, a big club that must always be generating the big feelings. But also, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of judgment most visibly and cruelly observed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been coveting footballers, eulogising them, salivating over them. Now, only a handful of games later, many of those same players are already being disdained as broken goods. Should we start to worry about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need their striker wise? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that Sesko meets Liverpool on the weekend: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at home in the league and yet in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like filing a a report on someone who went to the store half an hour ago. Too open. Their star finished. The striker an expensive flop. The coach bald.

Perhaps 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 repivoted around discussion topics and immediate responses, something that happens in the backdrop while we browse through our devices, unable to disconnect from the constant flow of takes and further hot takes. Perhaps Sesko taking the hit right now. However, everyone is sacrificing something here.