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Imagine this: a smiling the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Now, place it with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he's missed a sitter. Don't bother locating a real picture of that miss; context is your adversary. Now, add statistics in a large, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Share the image everywhere.

Would you point out that Højlund's goal count features strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko does not compete in Europe? Of course not. Nor will you highlight that several of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that his national team is far superior to Slovenia and creates far more scoring opportunities. You run online for a major brand, raw engagement is what pays the bills, United are the biggest draw, and context is the thing to avoid.

So the wheel of content spins. Your next task is to sift through a lengthy podcast featuring Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where Schmeichel qualifies his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. Nobody needs that. Just make sure "weird" and "the player" appear together in the headline. People will be furious.

The Season of Promise and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my preferred periods to observe football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, squads and strategies are still fresh, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the season ahead are planting their flags. The summer market is shut. No one is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are in contention. At this precise point, anything is possible.

Yet, for similar reasons, this period has also 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 right now? Please a decision now.

Sesko as Patient Zero

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to delay definitive judgment, allowing layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to develop. And the imperative to produce instant verdicts, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, context-free criticisms and pointless comparisons, a square that can not truly be solved.

It is not my aim to offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's time at Manchester United to date. He has been in the lineup on four occasions in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and taken a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we analysing? Nor do I propose to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits argue thrillingly on a podcast over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be a success this season (Neville), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I enjoyed watching Sesko at his former club: a big, fast racing car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: afforded the freedom to attack but also the leeway to fail. Partly this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in about the time it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most pitiless gulf between the time and air he requires, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

We saw a case of this over the national team pause, when a viral infographic conveniently stated that Sesko had been deemed – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the media are by no means the only ones in such behavior. Club channels, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: everybody with a vested interest is now basically operating along the same principles, an ecosystem deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite stream of irritation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the center of this, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about them is now essentially material, product, 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 narrative, a big club that must always be producing the strong emotions. But also, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of judgment most clearly and cruelly observed at this season, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been coveting players, eulogising them, salivating over them. Now, only a handful of games later, a lot of those same players are already being disdained as failures. Should we start to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that he meets Liverpool on Sunday: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and somehow in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like filing a missing person’s report on a person who went to the store half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Their star past his prime. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football itself, to inflect the way we watch it, an whole competition reoriented around talking points and reaction, an activity that happens in the backdrop while we browse through our devices, unable to disconnect from the constant flow of opinions and more takes. Perhaps this player taking the hit right now. But in a way, everyone is sacrificing something in this process.