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Imagine the following: a happy the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Now, juxtapose that with a dejected Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, appearing like he's missed an open goal. Do not bother locating a real picture of that miss; background information is your adversary. Now, include statistics in a big, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Share it across all platforms.

Would you point out that Højlund's tally includes strikes in the premier European competition while his counterpart isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. Nor would you highlight that several of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that his national team is much stronger to Slovenia and creates far more chances. If you manage online for a major brand, raw engagement is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

So the wheel of online material spins. The next job is to sift through a 44-minute podcast featuring the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "weird". 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 "strange" and "Sesko" are paired in the headline. The audience will be furious.

The Season of Potential and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my preferred times to observe football. Leaves fall, winds shift, squads and strategies are still fresh, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the coming months are staking their claims. The summer market is closed. No one is mentioning the quadruple yet. Everyone are in contention. Right now, all is possibility.

However, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my most disliked times to read about football. For while nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league right now? We need a decision now.

Sesko as The Prime Example

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The need to delay definitive judgment, to let technical development and strategic understanding to mature. And the imperative to generate permanent definitive judgment, a constant stream of takes and memes, out-of-context condemnations and meaningless contrasts, a square that can never truly be circled.

It is not my aim to provide a in-depth analysis of Sesko's time at United so far. He has been in the lineup on four occasions in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and had a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we analysing? And do I propose to replicate the pundits' notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts duel passionately on a podcast over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be a success this year (one pundit), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at Leipzig: a powerful, fast racing car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: afforded the license to attack but also the leeway to fail. Partly this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most ruthless gulf between the patience and space he requires, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

We saw a case of this over the international break, when a widely shared chart handily stated that Sesko had been judged – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the recent market by a poll of football representatives. And of course, the media are not the only ones in such behavior. Club channels, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with skin in the game is now basically operating along the identical rules, an environment explicitly geared for provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this endless sluice of irritation is doing to our brains? Separate from the essential weirdness of playing in the center of this, aware on some surreal butterfly-effect level that every single thing about them is now essentially material, commodity, public property to be repackaged and traded.

Indeed, partly this is because United are United, the entity that continues to feed the narrative, a major institution that must always be producing the strong emotions. However, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of opinion most clearly and cruelly glimpsed at this season, about a month after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been coveting footballers, eulogising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are already being dismissed as broken goods. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need their striker necessary? What was the point of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that Sesko faces their rivals on the weekend: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at home in the Premier League and somehow in their own situation of feverish crisis, like filing a a report on someone who went to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah finished. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football itself, to inflect the way we watch it, an whole competition repivoted around discussion topics and immediate responses, something that occurs in the background while we browse through our phones, unable to detach from the saline drip of opinions and further hot takes. Perhaps Sesko taking the hit right now. But in a way, we're all sacrificing something in this process.