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Imagine this: a happy the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Next, place it with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Do not bother locating an actual photo of that miss; context is your adversary. Then, include statistics in a big, silly font. Don't forget some emoticons. Post it everywhere.

Would you point out that Højlund's tally features scores in the Champions League while his counterpart does not compete in continental tournaments? Certainly not. Nor will you highlight that several of Højlund's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and generates far more scoring opportunities. You run online for a major brand, raw interaction is what pays the bills, United are the biggest draw, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

So the wheel of content turns. The next job is to sift through a lengthy podcast with Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "strange". Just before, where Schmeichel prefaces his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. Nobody needs that. Just make sure "strange" and "the player" appear together in the headline. The audience will be outraged.

This Time of Potential and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has long been one of my favourite periods to watch football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, squads and strategies are newly formed, 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. No one is mentioning the quadruple yet. Everyone 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. The City winger is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league at this moment? We need a decision now.

The Player as Patient Zero

In many ways, Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The need to withhold definitive judgment, to let technical development and strategic understanding to mature. And the demand to generate instant definitive judgment, a constant stream of takes and jokes, context-free criticisms and meaningless comparisons, a puzzle that can never truly be solved.

I do not propose to offer a in-depth analysis of Sesko's time at Manchester United so far. The guy has been in the lineup on four occasions in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and had a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we evaluating? And do I propose to replicate the pundits' notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits duel thrillingly on a podcast over whether he needs 10 goals to be a success this year (Neville), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I loved watching him at his former club: a powerful, fast racing car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: given the freedom to attack but also the leeway to miss. Partly 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 roughly the duration it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most pitiless gulf between the patience and space he requires, and the opportunity he is going to get.

There was a case of this over the international break, when a viral infographic handily stated that Sesko had been deemed – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. And of course, the media are by no means alone in such behavior. Club channels, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: everybody with skin in the game is now basically operating along the identical rules, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards provocation.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to ourselves? Are we aware, on any level, what this infinite sluice of aggravation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of playing in the center of this, aware on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that every single thing about them is now basically material, commodity, open-source property to be packaged and exchanged.

And yes, partly this is because United are United, the corpse that continues to feed the cycle, a big club that must always be generating the strong emotions. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of judgment most visibly and harshly observed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been desiring players, praising them, salivating over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are already being disdained as failures. Is it time to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker wise? What was the point of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that he faces Liverpool on Sunday: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at home in the league and yet in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like submitting a a report on a person who went to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Their star past his prime. The striker an expensive flop. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to inflect the way we watch it, an whole competition reoriented around discussion topics and immediate responses, an activity that happens in the background while we scroll through our devices, unable to detach from the constant flow of takes and more takes. Perhaps Sesko bearing the brunt at present. But in a way, everyone is sacrificing something in this process.