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Picture the following: a smiling the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Next, place that with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he's missed an open goal. Do not worry finding an actual photo of him missing; background information is your adversary. Now, include some goal stats in a large, comical font. Remember some emoticons. Post the image everywhere.

Would you point out that Højlund's goal count features strikes in the Champions League while Sesko isn't playing in Europe? Of course not. Nor will you note that several of the Dane's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that his national team is much stronger to Slovenia and creates many more chances. You manage social media for a major brand, pure engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

Thus the wheel of online material spins. Your next task is to scan a 44-minute podcast with Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "weird". Just before, where he prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. No one needs that. Simply ensure "weird" 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 watch football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, squads and strategies are still fresh, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the season ahead are staking their claims. The transfer window is shut. Nobody is talking about the quadruple yet. All teams are in contention. At this precise point, all is possibility.

However, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my most disliked times to read about football. For while no outcomes are decided, 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 at this moment? Please an answer now.

Sesko as Patient Zero

In many ways, Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player caught between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to delay final conclusions, to let technical development and tactical sophistication to mature. And the imperative to produce instant verdicts, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, out-of-context condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a puzzle that can never truly be circled.

It is not my aim to offer a substantive evaluation of Sesko's time at Manchester United so far. He has been in the lineup four times in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and had a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we evaluating? And do I propose to replicate the pundits' notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel passionately on a podcast over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this year (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I enjoyed watching him at Leipzig: a powerful, screeching racing car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: afforded the license to rampage but also the freedom to fail. Partly this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in about the time it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most pitiless gap between the patience and space he requires, and the time and air he is going to get.

We saw an example of this during the national team pause, when a viral chart handily stated that Sesko had been deemed – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a survey of football representatives. And of course, the media are by no means alone in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: all parties with skin in the game is now basically aligned along the identical rules, an environment deliberately geared for controversy.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to us? Do we realize, on some level, what this infinite stream of irritation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of playing in the middle of this, knowing on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about them is now essentially content, product, public property to be repackaged and traded.

Indeed, partly this is because United are United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the cycle, a big club that must constantly be producing the strong emotions. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a swing of judgment most visibly and harshly glimpsed at this season, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. All summer long we have been coveting players, praising them, drooling over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, a lot of those same players are already being dismissed as failures. Is it time to worry about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker wise? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that Sesko meets their rivals on Sunday: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and somehow in their own state of feverish crisis, like filing a missing person’s report on someone who went to the store half an hour ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah finished. The striker an expensive flop. The coach losing his hair.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to influence the way we watch it, an entire sport repivoted around discussion topics and immediate responses, something that happens 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 Sesko bearing the brunt right now. However, everyone is sacrificing a part of the experience here.