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Picture this: a smiling Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, place it with a dejected Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, appearing like he just missed an open goal. Don't bother locating a real picture of him missing; context is your adversary. Then, add statistics in a big, silly font. Don't forget the emojis. Share the image across all platforms.

Will you point out that Højlund's goal count includes strikes in the Champions League while his counterpart isn't playing in Europe? Certainly not. And would you highlight that several of the Dane's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that Denmark is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and creates many more scoring opportunities. You run social media for a large outlet, raw engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the prime target, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

So the wheel of content turns. The next job is to scan a lengthy interview with the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where Schmeichel qualifies his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. No one wants that. Just make sure "strange" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. The audience will be furious.

The Season of Promise and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has long been one of my favourite times to observe football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are still fresh, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the coming months are planting their flags. The summer market is closed. No one is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. All teams are still in the game. At this precise point, anything is possible.

However, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. For while no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. 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 immediately.

The Player as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player caught between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to withhold final conclusions, to let technical development and strategic understanding to develop. And the imperative to generate instant definitive judgment, a constant stream of takes and memes, out-of-context condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a square that can never truly be solved.

It is not my aim to provide a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's time at United to date. He has started on four occasions in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and taken a grand total of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? Nor do I propose to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits argue passionately on a podcast over whether he needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this year (Neville), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I enjoyed watching him at his former club: a powerful, screeching racing car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: afforded the freedom to rampage but also the freedom to fail. And in part this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in about the time it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most ruthless gulf between the patience and space he needs, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

There was an example of this over the international break, when a widely shared infographic handily stated that the player had been deemed – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the press are by no means alone in such behavior. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with a vested interest is now essentially operating along the same principles, an environment explicitly nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to ourselves? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite stream of irritation is doing to our brains? Separate from the essential weirdness of being a player in the center of it all, aware on some surreal chain-reaction level that every single thing about them is now essentially content, commodity, public property to be packaged and exchanged.

And yes, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that continues to feed the cycle, a major institution that must constantly be generating the strong emotions. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a swing of judgment most clearly and harshly glimpsed at this season, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been desiring players, eulogising them, drooling over them. Now, just a few weeks in, many of those same players are now being dismissed as failures. Is it time to worry about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need their striker wise? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that he faces their rivals on Sunday: 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 store 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Their star finished. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. 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 reoriented around discussion topics and reaction, something that happens in the background while we scroll through our phones, unable to detach from the constant flow of opinions and further hot takes. Perhaps Sesko taking the hit at present. However, we're all sacrificing something in this process.