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Imagine the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, place that with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, looking as if he's missed a sitter. Don't worry locating an actual photo of him missing; background information is your adversary. Then, add some goal stats in a large, comical font. Remember some emoticons. Share it across all platforms.

Will you point out that Højlund's tally features scores in the Champions League while Sesko isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. And will you note that four of the Dane's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and creates far more scoring opportunities. If you run social media for a major brand, pure interaction is your livelihood, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

So the wheel of content 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 "weird". There's a bit, where he qualifies his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. No one wants that. Simply make sure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired in the headline. People will be outraged.

This Time of Promise and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my favourite times to observe football. Leaves fall, winds shift, squads and strategies are still fresh, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the season ahead are planting their flags. The summer market is shut. No one is talking about the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are still in the game. Right now, anything is possible.

However, for many of the same reasons, this period has long been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. For while nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is reborn. The German talent has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league right now? Please a decision immediately.

Sesko as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The need to delay definitive judgment, to let technical development and tactical sophistication to mature. And the imperative to produce instant definitive judgment, a constant stream of takes and jokes, out-of-context condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a square that can never truly be solved.

It is not my aim to provide a substantive evaluation of Sesko's time at Manchester United so far. He has been in the lineup four times in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and had a mere of 116 touches. What precisely are we evaluating? Nor will I attempt to duplicate the pundits' notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel passionately on a popular show over whether he needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this season (one pundit), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at his former club: a big, fast sports car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: 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 right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in about the time it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most ruthless gulf between the time and air he requires, and the time and air he is going to get.

There was a case of this during the international break, when a widely shared infographic handily stated that the player had been deemed – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the press are by no means alone in such behavior. Club channels, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with a vested interest is now basically aligned along the identical rules, an environment deliberately geared for controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? Do we realize, on any level, what this infinite sluice of irritation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of being a player in the center of it all, knowing on a bizarre chain-reaction level that every single thing about players is now essentially content, commodity, public property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, in part this is because United are United, the entity that continues to feed the narrative, a big club that must constantly be generating the big feelings. However, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of judgment most clearly and cruelly glimpsed at this season, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been desiring players, eulogising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are already being disdained as broken goods. Is it time to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that he meets Liverpool on Sunday: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at home in the league and yet in their own state of perceived turmoil, like submitting a a report on a person who popped to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah finished. The striker waste of money. The coach losing his hair.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has started to replace football the actual game, to inflect the way we view it, an entire sport repivoted around discussion topics and immediate responses, something that happens in the backdrop while we scroll through our devices, incapable to disconnect from the constant flow of opinions and further hot takes. It may be Sesko bearing the brunt right now. But in a way, we're all losing a part of the experience here.