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Picture the following: a happy Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Next, juxtapose that with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he just missed a sitter. Do not bother finding a real picture of that miss; context is your adversary. Then, add statistics in a large, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Post the image across all platforms.

Would you mention that Højlund's goal count includes strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko does not compete in Europe? Of course not. Nor would you note that several of Højlund's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that Denmark is much stronger to Slovenia and generates far more chances. You run online for a large outlet, pure interaction is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

So the cycle of content spins. Your next task is to scan a 44-minute podcast featuring Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "strange". Just before, where he prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. No one needs that. Simply ensure "weird" and "the player" appear together in the headline. The audience will be furious.

This Time of Promise and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has long been one of my favourite periods to watch football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are newly formed, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the season ahead are planting their flags. The summer market is shut. No one is talking about the quadruple yet. Everyone are still in the game. At this precise point, all is possibility.

However, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my most disliked times to read about football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is reborn. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league at this moment? Please a decision immediately.

Sesko as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The need to delay final conclusions, to let technical development and tactical sophistication to develop. And the demand to generate permanent verdicts, a constant stream of takes and memes, context-free condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a puzzle that can never truly be solved.

I do not propose to offer a substantive evaluation of Sesko's stint at Manchester United so far. He has started on four occasions in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and taken a mere of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? And do I propose to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits duel passionately on a popular show over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be a success this year (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I enjoyed watching him at Leipzig: a big, fast racing car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: given the license 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 about the time it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most pitiless gap between the patience and space he needs, and the time and air he is going to get.

We saw a case of this during the international break, when a widely shared infographic handily stated that the player had been judged – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of football representatives. And of course, the media are not alone in such behavior. Club channels, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: everybody with skin in the game is now essentially aligned along the identical rules, an ecosystem deliberately geared for controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this endless sluice of aggravation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of playing in the middle of this, knowing on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that every single thing about players is now basically content, product, public property to be repackaged and exchanged.

Indeed, partly this is because United are United, the entity that continues to feed the narrative, a big club that must always be producing the strong emotions. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, a swing of opinion most visibly and harshly observed at this time of year, about a month after the window has closed. All summer long we have been coveting players, praising them, salivating over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, many of those very players are now being disdained as failures. Should we start to worry about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that he faces their rivals on the weekend: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at home in the league and somehow in their own state of feverish crisis, like submitting a a report on someone who popped to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Their star finished. The striker waste of money. The coach bald.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to inflect the way we view it, an whole competition repivoted around talking points and immediate responses, something that happens in the background while we scroll through our devices, unable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. Perhaps this player bearing the brunt at present. However, everyone is losing a part of the experience in this process.