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Imagine this: a happy the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Next, place it with a dejected the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, looking as if he's missed a sitter. Don't bother locating an actual photo of him missing; context is your adversary. Then, add some goal stats in a large, comical font. Don't forget some emoticons. Share the image everywhere.

Would you mention that Højlund's goal count includes scores in the Champions League while Sesko isn't playing in Europe? Certainly not. Nor would you note that several of Højlund's goals came against weaker national sides, or that his national team is much stronger to Slovenia and creates far more scoring opportunities. If you manage online for a major brand, raw engagement is your livelihood, United are the biggest draw, and context is your sworn enemy.

So the cycle of content spins. The next job is to scan a 44-minute interview with the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. No one needs that. Simply make sure "strange" and "the player" are paired in the title. The audience will be outraged.

The Season of Promise and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my favourite times to observe football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, the teams and tactics are still fresh, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the season ahead are planting their flags. The summer market is closed. No one is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are still in the game. Right now, all is possibility.

However, for similar reasons, this period has long been one of my most disliked times to read about football. For while nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league at this moment? We need an answer now.

Sesko as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player caught between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to delay definitive judgment, to let technical development and tactical sophistication to develop. And the demand to produce instant definitive judgment, a constant stream of takes and memes, out-of-context condemnations and pointless contrasts, a puzzle that can never truly be circled.

It is not my aim to offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's time at United to date. The guy has been in the lineup on four occasions in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and taken a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we evaluating? And will I attempt to replicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits argue passionately on a podcast over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be a success this year (Neville), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I enjoyed watching Sesko at Leipzig: a powerful, screeching racing car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: given the license to rampage but also the freedom to miss. Partly this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in about the time it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most ruthless gap between the time and air he requires, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

There was an example of this over the international break, when a viral infographic handily informed us that Sesko had been judged – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a poll of 20 agents. And of course, the press are by no means the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot 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 are we doing to us? Do we realize, on some level, what this infinite sluice of aggravation is doing to our brains? Separate from the essential weirdness of being a player in the middle of it all, aware on some surreal chain-reaction level that every single thing about players is now essentially content, product, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

And yes, in part this is because United are United, the entity that continues to feed the narrative, 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 transfer market shut. All summer long we have been coveting footballers, praising them, drooling over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, many of those same players are already being disdained as failures. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that he meets their rivals on the weekend: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the league and yet in their own situation of feverish crisis, like filing a missing person’s report on a person who popped to the shops 30 minutes ago. Too open. Their star finished. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to influence the way we view it, an whole competition reoriented around discussion topics and reaction, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we scroll through our devices, incapable to detach from the saline drip of takes and more takes. Perhaps this player taking the hit right now. But in a way, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.