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Picture this: a smiling 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 a sitter. Don't bother finding a real picture of him missing; background information is your adversary. Then, include statistics in a large, comical font. Don't forget some emoticons. Share it across all platforms.

Would you mention that Højlund's tally features scores in the Champions League while Sesko isn't playing in Europe? Certainly not. Nor will you highlight that four of Højlund's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that his national team is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and creates many more chances. If you manage online for a large outlet, pure interaction is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and context is the thing to avoid.

Thus the wheel of online material turns. Your next task is to scan a lengthy podcast with Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "strange". Just before, where Schmeichel prefaces his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. Nobody needs that. Just ensure "strange" and "Sesko" are paired in the headline. The audience will be furious.

The Season of Potential and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has long been one of my preferred times to watch football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, squads and strategies are newly formed, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the season ahead are staking their claims. The transfer window is closed. Nobody is mentioning the quadruple yet. Everyone are still in the game. Right now, all is possibility.

However, for similar reasons, this period 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. The City winger is resurgent. The German talent has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league right now? Please an answer immediately.

The Player as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player caught between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to withhold final conclusions, to let technical development and tactical sophistication to mature. And the demand to produce permanent definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of opinions and memes, out-of-context criticisms and meaningless comparisons, a square that can never truly be circled.

I do not propose to offer a in-depth evaluation 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, found the net twice, and had a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we evaluating? Nor will I attempt to duplicate the pundits' notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts duel thrillingly on a podcast over whether he needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this year (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I loved watching him at Leipzig: a powerful, screeching sports car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: afforded the freedom to rampage but also the freedom to fail. Partly this is why 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 watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most ruthless gap between the time and air he requires, and the opportunity he is going to get.

We saw a case of this over the international break, when a viral infographic handily informed us that the player had been judged – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. And of course, the media are by no means alone in such behavior. Club channels, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: everybody with skin in the game is now basically operating along the identical rules, an environment explicitly nosed towards provocation.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite sluice of aggravation is doing to our minds? Separate from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the center of it all, knowing on some surreal butterfly-effect level that each aspect about them is now basically content, product, open-source property to be packaged and exchanged.

And yes, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the cycle, a big club that must constantly be generating the big feelings. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of opinion most visibly and harshly glimpsed at this time of year, about a month after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been coveting footballers, praising them, drooling over them. Now, only a handful of games later, many of those very players are already being disdained as broken goods. Should we start to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that he meets their rivals on the weekend: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at home in the league and yet in their own situation of feverish crisis, like submitting a missing person’s report on a person who went to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah past his prime. The striker an expensive flop. Arne Slot bald.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to influence the way we view it, an entire sport reoriented around talking points and immediate responses, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we browse through our phones, incapable to detach from the saline drip of opinions and further hot takes. Perhaps Sesko bearing the brunt right now. But in a way, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.