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Imagine the following: a happy the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Now, place that with a dejected the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he's missed an open goal. Do not worry finding a real picture of that miss; context is your adversary. Now, add statistics in a big, comical font. Don't forget some emoticons. Post the image everywhere.

Would you point out that Højlund's goal count features scores in the premier European competition while his counterpart isn't playing in Europe? Of course not. Nor would you note that four of Højlund's goals came against weaker national sides, or that his national team is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and generates far more chances. You manage online for a large outlet, pure interaction is your livelihood, United are the biggest draw, and context is the thing to avoid.

So the wheel of online material spins. Your next task is to scan a 44-minute interview with Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "strange". Just before, where Schmeichel prefaces his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. Nobody wants that. Just ensure "weird" and "Sesko" appear together in the headline. The audience will be outraged.

The Season of Promise and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my preferred periods to watch football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are newly formed, everything is new 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 talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are in contention. At this precise point, anything is possible.

However, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. For while no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league right now? We need a decision immediately.

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 imperative to withhold final conclusions, allowing technical development and strategic understanding to mature. And the imperative to generate instant definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, out-of-context condemnations and pointless comparisons, a puzzle that can never truly be circled.

It is not my aim to provide a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's stint at Manchester United so far. The guy has been in the lineup on four occasions in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and taken a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we analysing? And will I attempt to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts argue passionately on a popular show over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this season (Neville), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I enjoyed watching him at his former club: a powerful, fast sports car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: given the license to attack but also the freedom to fail. And in part this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most ruthless gap between the time and air he needs, and the opportunity he is going to get.

There was a case of this during the international break, when a viral infographic conveniently stated that the player had been deemed – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a survey of 20 agents. And of course, the media are not the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: everybody with a vested interest is now essentially operating along the identical rules, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards provocation.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to ourselves? Do we realize, on any level, what this endless stream of aggravation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of playing in the middle of this, knowing on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about players is now basically content, commodity, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

And yes, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that continues to feed the cycle, a major institution that must always be generating the big feelings. But also, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of opinion most clearly and harshly observed at this time of year, about a month after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been desiring players, eulogising them, drooling over them. Now, only a handful of games later, many of those very players are already being disdained as failures. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that Sesko faces their rivals on Sunday: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and somehow in their own situation of feverish crisis, like submitting a missing person’s report on someone who popped to the shops 30 minutes ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah finished. The striker waste of money. Arne Slot bald.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has started to replace football itself, to inflect the way we watch it, an whole competition reoriented around discussion topics and reaction, something that occurs in the backdrop while we scroll through our devices, incapable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. Perhaps this player taking the hit at present. But in a way, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.