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Imagine this: a happy the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Now, place that with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he's missed a sitter. Don't bother locating an actual photo of him missing; background information is the enemy. Now, add statistics in a big, comical font. Remember some emoticons. Post the image everywhere.

Will you point out that Højlund's goal count includes scores in the Champions League while Sesko isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. Nor will you note that four of Højlund's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and generates far more chances. You run social media for a major brand, pure interaction is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

So the wheel of content turns. Your next task is to scan a 44-minute interview with the legendary goalkeeper and find 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"... well, remove that part. No one wants that. Just ensure "strange" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. People will be furious.

This Time of Promise and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has long been one of my favourite periods to watch football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, squads and strategies are still fresh, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the coming months are staking their claims. The summer market is closed. Nobody is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are in contention. Right now, anything is possible.

However, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my most disliked times to read about football. Because although no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league right now? We need an answer immediately.

Sesko as Patient Zero

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player caught between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The need to delay definitive judgment, to let layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to mature. And the demand to produce instant verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, out-of-context condemnations and meaningless contrasts, a square that can never truly be circled.

I do not propose to provide a substantive analysis of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. He has started four times in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and taken a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we evaluating? And do I propose to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel thrillingly on a podcast over whether he needs 10 goals to be a success this season (Neville), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I enjoyed watching him at Leipzig: a powerful, fast racing car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: given the license to attack but also the freedom to fail. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most pitiless gap between the time and air he needs, and the opportunity he is going to get.

We saw a case of this during the international break, when a viral infographic conveniently stated that Sesko had been deemed – decisively – the worst signing of the recent market by a survey of football representatives. And of course, the media are by no means the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: all parties with skin in the game is now essentially operating along the identical rules, an environment explicitly geared for controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to us? Do we realize, on any level, what this endless stream of irritation is doing to our brains? Separate from the essential weirdness of being a player in the middle of this, aware on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that each aspect about them is now basically material, product, public property to be repackaged and exchanged.

And yes, partly this is because United are United, the entity that continues to feed the narrative, a big club that must always be producing the big feelings. However, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of judgment most visibly and cruelly glimpsed at this season, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been desiring players, eulogising them, drooling over them. Now, just a few weeks in, many of those same players are already being disdained as failures. Should we start to worry about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the point of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that Sesko meets Liverpool on Sunday: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the Premier League and somehow in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like filing a a report on a person who popped to the shops half an hour ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah past his prime. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. Arne Slot bald.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football itself, to influence the way we view it, an whole competition reoriented around discussion topics and reaction, something that occurs in the background while we browse through our phones, incapable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. Perhaps Sesko bearing the brunt at present. However, everyone is sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.