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Picture the following: a happy the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Next, juxtapose it with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, appearing like he's missed an open goal. Don't worry finding an actual photo of that miss; context is your adversary. Then, add statistics in a large, comical font. Remember the emojis. Post it everywhere.

Will you point out that Højlund's goal count features scores in the Champions League while his counterpart does not compete in Europe? Of course not. Nor will you note that several of Højlund's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and creates far more scoring opportunities. You run online for a major brand, raw engagement is your livelihood, Manchester 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 featuring the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where Schmeichel qualifies his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. Nobody wants that. Simply ensure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. The audience will be outraged.

This Time of Promise and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my favourite periods to watch football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, the teams and tactics are still fresh, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the coming months are staking their claims. The transfer window is closed. Nobody is mentioning the quadruple yet. Everyone are still in the game. Right now, anything is possible.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. Because although no outcomes are decided, 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 at this moment? We need an answer immediately.

The Player as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player caught between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The need to withhold final conclusions, to let layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to produce permanent definitive judgment, a constant stream of opinions and jokes, context-free criticisms and pointless comparisons, a puzzle that can never truly be circled.

It is not my aim to provide a substantive analysis of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. The guy has been in the lineup on four occasions in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and taken a mere of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? And will I attempt to duplicate the pundits' notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts argue passionately on a podcast over whether he needs 10 goals to be a success this year (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching Sesko at Leipzig: a powerful, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: given the freedom to attack but also the freedom to fail. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in roughly the duration it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most ruthless gulf between the patience and space he needs, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

There was a case of this during the international break, when a viral chart conveniently informed us that Sesko had been judged – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a poll of 20 agents. And of course, the press are by no means alone in this. Club channels, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of fake followers: everybody with skin in the game is now essentially aligned along the identical rules, an environment explicitly geared for controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to ourselves? Do we realize, on some level, what this endless stream of irritation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of playing in the middle of this, knowing on some surreal chain-reaction level that every single thing about players is now essentially content, commodity, public property to be packaged and exchanged.

Indeed, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a major institution that must constantly be generating the strong emotions. But also, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of judgment most clearly and cruelly observed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been coveting players, praising them, drooling over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, a lot of those very players are already being dismissed as failures. Is it time to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the point of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that he faces Liverpool on Sunday: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at home in the Premier League and somehow in their own situation of feverish crisis, like submitting a a report on someone who popped to the store half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah past his prime. 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 itself, to influence the way we watch it, an whole competition repivoted around talking points and reaction, something that happens in the backdrop while we scroll through our phones, unable to disconnect from the constant flow of opinions and more takes. It may be this player bearing the brunt right now. But in a way, we're all losing something here.