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Imagine the following: a smiling the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Now, place that with a dejected Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Do not worry finding a real picture of that miss; context is the enemy. Then, add some goal stats in a big, silly font. Don't forget some emoticons. Share the image across all platforms.

Would you point out that Højlund's goal count features scores in the Champions League while Sesko does not compete in Europe? Of course not. And would you highlight that several of the Dane's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and creates far more chances. You manage social media for a major brand, pure interaction is your livelihood, Manchester United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

So the cycle of online material turns. The next job is to sift through a lengthy interview with the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he qualifies his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. Nobody needs that. Simply ensure "strange" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. People will be furious.

The Season of Potential and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has long been one of my favourite times to observe football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, squads and strategies are newly formed, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the season ahead are planting their flags. The transfer window is closed. Nobody is talking about the quadruple yet. All teams 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 least favourite times to read about football. For while nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is reborn. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league right now? Please an answer immediately.

Sesko as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The need to delay final conclusions, allowing layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to generate instant definitive judgment, a constant stream of takes and jokes, context-free criticisms and meaningless contrasts, a square that can never truly be solved.

It is not my aim to provide a substantive evaluation of Sesko's stint at United to date. The guy has started four times in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and taken a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we analysing? Nor will I attempt to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts argue thrillingly on a popular show over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be a success this season (one pundit), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I loved watching Sesko at his former club: a powerful, screeching racing car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: given the license to rampage but also the freedom to miss. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be right now: 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 time and air he requires, and the opportunity he is going to get.

There was an example of this over the international break, when a viral chart conveniently stated that the player had been judged – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a survey of 20 agents. Naturally, the press are by no means alone in such behavior. Team social media, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of fake followers: all parties with a vested interest is now basically operating along the same principles, an environment explicitly nosed towards provocation.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to us? Do we realize, on any level, what this infinite sluice of aggravation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of playing in the center of it all, knowing on a bizarre chain-reaction level that every single thing about players is now essentially content, commodity, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

And yes, partly this is because United are United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a big club that must always be producing the big feelings. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of judgment most clearly and cruelly glimpsed at this time of year, about a month after the window has closed. All summer long we have been coveting footballers, eulogising them, drooling over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, a lot of those same players are now being dismissed as broken goods. Should we start to worry about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker wise? What was the point of another expensive buy?

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 Premier League and somehow in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like filing a a report on a person who popped to the shops half an hour ago. Too open. Their star finished. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. Arne Slot bald.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football itself, to inflect the way we view it, an entire sport reoriented around talking points and reaction, something that happens in the background while we scroll through our devices, incapable to disconnect from the constant flow of opinions and further hot takes. Perhaps this player taking the hit at present. But in a way, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience here.