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Imagine this: a smiling Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, juxtapose that with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he's missed a sitter. Do not bother finding an actual photo of him missing; context is the enemy. Now, include some goal stats in a big, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Share the image everywhere.

Will you mention that Højlund's tally includes scores in the Champions League while Sesko isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. Nor would you highlight that four of Højlund's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is far superior to Slovenia and generates many more scoring opportunities. You manage social media for a major brand, raw engagement is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and context is the thing to avoid.

So the cycle of online material turns. Your next task is to scan a lengthy interview with the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "weird". Just before, where Schmeichel prefaces his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. No one wants that. Just ensure "weird" and "Sesko" appear together in the title. People will be furious.

The Season of Potential and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has long been one of my preferred periods to observe football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, squads and strategies are newly formed, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the coming months are planting their flags. The transfer window is closed. No one is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are in contention. Right now, all is possibility.

Yet, for similar reasons, this period has long been one of my least favourite times to read about football. For while nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league right now? Please an answer now.

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, unavoidable forces. The need to delay definitive judgment, to let layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to mature. And the demand to generate instant verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, out-of-context criticisms and meaningless comparisons, a puzzle that can never truly be solved.

I do not propose to provide a substantive analysis of Sesko's time at United to date. The guy has started on four occasions in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and had a grand total of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? Nor do I propose to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits argue thrillingly on a popular show over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be a success this year (Neville), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I loved watching him at Leipzig: a big, screeching racing car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: given the freedom to attack but also the leeway to miss. 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 summarily issued in about the time it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most pitiless gulf between the time and air he requires, and the opportunity he is going to get.

We saw a case of this during the international break, when a viral chart conveniently stated that the player had been judged – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a survey of football representatives. And of course, the press are by no means alone in this. Club channels, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: all parties with skin in the game is now essentially aligned along the same principles, an ecosystem deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? Do we realize, on any level, what this infinite sluice of aggravation is doing to our minds? Separate from the inherent strangeness of playing in the middle of it all, knowing on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that each aspect about players is now essentially material, commodity, public property to be repackaged and traded.

And yes, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that continues to feed the cycle, a big club that must constantly be producing the strong emotions. However, partly this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of opinion most visibly and harshly observed at this season, about a month after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been coveting players, eulogising them, drooling over them. Now, only a handful of games later, a lot of those same players are now being dismissed as broken goods. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need their striker wise? What was the point of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that he faces Liverpool on Sunday: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the Premier League and somehow in their own state of feverish crisis, like submitting a missing person’s report on a person who went to the store 30 minutes ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah past his prime. The striker waste of money. The coach losing his hair.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has started to replace football the actual game, to influence the way we watch it, an entire sport reoriented around discussion topics and immediate responses, something that occurs in the background while we scroll through our devices, unable to disconnect from the saline drip of takes and more takes. It may be Sesko bearing the brunt at present. However, we're all losing a part of the experience here.