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Picture this: a happy the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Next, juxtapose that with a dejected Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he's missed a sitter. Do not bother finding a real picture of that miss; context is the enemy. Now, include some goal stats in a big, comical font. Remember some emoticons. Share the image everywhere.

Will you mention that Højlund's tally features scores in the premier European competition while his counterpart isn't playing in Europe? Of course not. Nor will you note that several of Højlund's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and generates far more chances. You manage online for a major brand, pure interaction is your livelihood, Manchester United are the prime target, and context is your sworn enemy.

So the wheel of online material turns. The next job is to sift through a lengthy interview with Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where Schmeichel prefaces his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. No one wants that. Simply ensure "strange" and "Sesko" appear together in the title. The audience will be outraged.

The Season of Potential and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my preferred periods to watch football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, squads and strategies are still fresh, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the coming months are planting their flags. The summer market is shut. No one is talking about the quadruple yet. All teams are still in the game. At this precise point, anything is possible.

However, for similar reasons, this period has long been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is resurgent. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? We need a decision immediately.

Sesko as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to withhold final conclusions, to let technical development and strategic understanding to develop. And the imperative to generate instant verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and memes, out-of-context criticisms and pointless comparisons, a puzzle that can not truly be solved.

I do not propose to offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's time at United to date. He 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 analysing? Nor do I propose to duplicate the pundits' notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts argue passionately on a popular show over whether he needs 10 goals to be a success this year (Neville), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching Sesko at his former club: a big, screeching racing car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: given the license to rampage but also the freedom to miss. Partly this is why 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 short advertisement, the club with the largest and most pitiless gap between the patience and space he requires, and the opportunity he is going to get.

We saw an example of this over the international break, when a widely shared infographic handily stated that the player had been judged – decisively – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a survey of 20 agents. Naturally, the media are not alone in this. Club channels, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of fake followers: everybody with a vested interest is now essentially operating along the identical rules, an ecosystem deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? Are we aware, on any level, what this infinite stream of aggravation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of playing in the center of this, knowing on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that every single thing about them is now basically content, commodity, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

And yes, in part this is because United are United, the corpse that continues to feed the cycle, a big club that must always be generating the strong emotions. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, a swing of judgment most clearly and cruelly observed at this time of year, about a month after the window has closed. All summer long we have been desiring players, praising them, drooling over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, many of those very players are now being dismissed as broken goods. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that Sesko meets Liverpool on Sunday: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at home in the Premier League and somehow in their own state of perceived turmoil, like submitting a missing person’s report on someone who went to the shops 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah past his prime. The striker waste of money. Arne Slot bald.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football itself, to inflect the way we watch it, an whole competition repivoted around discussion topics and immediate responses, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we browse through our devices, unable to disconnect from the saline drip of takes and further hot takes. It may be this player taking the hit at present. But in a way, we're all losing a part of the experience in this process.