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Imagine the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Now, juxtapose that with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he's missed an open goal. Do not bother locating an actual photo of him missing; context is the enemy. Then, include some goal stats in a large, comical font. Remember some emoticons. Share it everywhere.

Will you mention that Højlund's goal count includes scores in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in Europe? Of course not. And would you highlight that several of the Dane's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is much stronger to Slovenia and creates far more scoring opportunities. If you run online for a large outlet, raw engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the cycle of content spins. Your next task is to scan a 44-minute podcast featuring the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where he prefaces his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. Nobody needs that. Simply ensure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired in the headline. People will be outraged.

The Season of Promise and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my preferred times to watch football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, squads and strategies are newly formed, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the coming months are staking their claims. The transfer window is closed. No one is talking about the multiple trophies yet. Everyone 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 consume news on football. For while nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league at this moment? We need a decision immediately.

The Player as The Prime Example

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to delay final conclusions, allowing technical development and strategic understanding to mature. And the demand to produce instant verdicts, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, context-free condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a square that can never truly be circled.

It is not my aim to provide a substantive evaluation of Sesko's time at United so far. He has been in the lineup on four occasions in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and taken a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we analysing? Nor will I attempt to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits argue thrillingly on a popular show over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this season (one pundit), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I loved watching him at his former club: a big, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: afforded the freedom to rampage but also the freedom to miss. Partly this is why Manchester 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 load a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most ruthless gap between the time and air he needs, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

There was an example of this during the international break, when a widely shared infographic conveniently informed us that the player had been deemed – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the press are not the only ones in this. Club channels, influencers, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: all parties with a vested interest is now basically aligned along the identical rules, an environment deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to us? Are we aware, on any level, what this endless stream of aggravation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the center of this, knowing on some surreal chain-reaction level that each aspect about them is now essentially material, product, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

Indeed, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that continues to feed the cycle, a big club that must always be generating the strong emotions. But also, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of opinion most visibly and cruelly glimpsed at this time of year, about a month after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been desiring footballers, eulogising them, salivating over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, a lot of those very players are now being disdained as failures. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that he faces their rivals on Sunday: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at home in the league and somehow in their own state of perceived turmoil, like filing a a report on someone who went to the store half an hour ago. Too open. Their star finished. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. Arne Slot bald.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has started to replace football the actual game, to inflect the way we watch it, an entire sport repivoted around talking points and reaction, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we scroll through our devices, incapable to disconnect from the saline drip of takes and more takes. It may be this player bearing the brunt right now. However, everyone is losing something here.