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Picture the following: a happy the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Next, place it with a dejected Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, looking as if he's missed an open goal. Don't bother finding a real picture of that miss; background information is the enemy. Now, include some goal stats in a large, comical font. Don't forget some emoticons. Post it across all platforms.

Will you point out that Højlund's goal count includes strikes in the Champions League while his counterpart does not compete in continental tournaments? Certainly not. Nor would you highlight that several of Højlund's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that his national team is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and generates far more chances. If you run online for a large outlet, raw interaction is what pays the bills, United are the biggest draw, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

So the cycle of online material spins. The next job is to scan a 44-minute podcast featuring Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where Schmeichel qualifies his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. No one needs that. Simply ensure "weird" and "the player" are paired in the headline. The audience will be furious.

This Time of Promise and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my favourite periods to observe football. Leaves fall, winds shift, the teams and tactics are newly formed, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the season ahead are staking their claims. The transfer window is closed. No one is mentioning the quadruple yet. All teams are still in the game. Right now, anything is possible.

However, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my most disliked times to read about football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish 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 immediately.

Sesko as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player caught between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The need to delay definitive judgment, allowing layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to mature. And the demand to generate instant definitive judgment, a constant stream of takes and jokes, context-free condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a square that can not truly be circled.

It is not my aim to provide a in-depth analysis of Sesko's stint at United so far. The guy has started on four occasions in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and taken a mere of 116 touches. What exactly are we evaluating? And will I attempt to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits duel passionately on a podcast over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this year (one pundit), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I loved watching Sesko at his former club: a big, fast sports car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: given the license to rampage but also the freedom to fail. And in part this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most pitiless gap between the time and air he needs, and the time and air he is going to get.

There was an example of this over the international break, when a viral infographic handily stated that the player had been judged – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the press are by no means alone in this. Club channels, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of fake followers: everybody with skin in the game is now essentially aligned along the identical rules, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards provocation.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite sluice of irritation is doing to our brains? Separate from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the center of it all, knowing on some surreal butterfly-effect level that every single thing about them is now basically content, commodity, public property to be packaged and exchanged.

Indeed, in part this is because United are United, the entity that continues to feed the cycle, a major institution that must always be producing the strong emotions. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of judgment most visibly and harshly observed at this time of year, about a month after the window has closed. All summer long we have been coveting footballers, praising them, drooling over them. Now, just a few weeks in, many of those same players are now being disdained as failures. Should we start to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that Sesko faces Liverpool on the weekend: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at home in the Premier League and somehow in their own state of perceived turmoil, like filing a missing person’s report on someone who went to the shops 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah past his prime. The striker an expensive flop. The coach losing his hair.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football itself, to inflect the way we watch it, an entire sport reoriented around talking points and reaction, something that happens in the backdrop while we browse through our devices, incapable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit at present. However, everyone is sacrificing something here.