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Picture this: a happy the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Now, juxtapose it with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed a sitter. Don't worry locating a real picture of that miss; background information is your adversary. Then, add some goal stats in a large, comical font. Remember some emoticons. Share the image across all platforms.

Would you point out that Højlund's goal count includes scores in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. Nor would you highlight that several of the Dane's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and creates many more chances. You run social media for a major brand, pure interaction is your livelihood, United are the biggest draw, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

Thus the wheel of online material spins. The next job is to sift through a 44-minute podcast with the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "strange". Just before, where Schmeichel qualifies his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. Nobody wants that. Just ensure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired in the headline. The audience will be outraged.

This Time of Potential and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my preferred periods to watch football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are still fresh, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the coming months are planting their flags. The summer market is shut. No one is mentioning the quadruple yet. Everyone are still in the game. At this precise point, all is possibility.

Yet, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. Because although no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is reborn. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league right now? Please an answer now.

Sesko as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player caught between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The need to withhold definitive judgment, to let layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to mature. And the imperative to produce permanent definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, out-of-context criticisms and meaningless contrasts, a square that can not truly be circled.

I do not propose to provide a substantive analysis of Sesko's stint at United to date. He has started four times in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and had a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we evaluating? And will I attempt to duplicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel thrillingly on a popular show over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this season (one pundit), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I enjoyed watching him at Leipzig: a big, fast sports car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: given the license to attack but also the freedom to miss. Partly this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most pitiless gap between the time and air he requires, and the opportunity he is going to get.

We saw an example of this during the national team pause, when a viral chart handily stated that the player had been judged – decisively – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a poll of football representatives. And of course, the press are by no means the only ones in this. Club channels, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially aligned 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 aggravation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of playing in the center of this, knowing on some surreal butterfly-effect level that each aspect about them is now basically content, commodity, public property to be repackaged and exchanged.

And yes, partly 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 temporary malaise, a swing of opinion most clearly and cruelly observed at this time of year, about a month after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been desiring footballers, praising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are now being dismissed as failures. Is it time to worry about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the point of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that Sesko faces their rivals on Sunday: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and yet in their own situation of feverish crisis, like submitting a missing person’s report on someone who popped to the store half an hour ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah finished. Alexander Isak 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 influence the way we view it, an whole competition repivoted around discussion topics and immediate responses, an activity that happens in the background while we browse through our devices, incapable to disconnect from the saline drip of takes and more takes. It may be this player taking the hit right now. However, we're all sacrificing something here.