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Picture the following: a happy the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Next, place it with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, looking as if he's missed an open goal. Don't worry finding a real picture of that miss; background information is the enemy. Now, add some goal stats in a big, silly font. Don't forget some emoticons. Share it across all platforms.

Will you point out that Højlund's tally includes scores in the Champions League while his counterpart isn't playing in Europe? Of course not. Nor would you highlight that several of Højlund's goals came against weaker national sides, or that his national team is far superior to Slovenia and generates far more scoring opportunities. If you manage online for a major brand, raw interaction is your livelihood, Manchester United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

Thus the wheel of content turns. The next job is to scan a 44-minute interview with the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where he qualifies his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. Nobody wants that. Just make sure "weird" and "the player" are paired in the headline. The audience will be outraged.

The Season of Promise and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my favourite periods to observe football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, squads and strategies are still fresh, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the coming months are planting their flags. The transfer window is closed. Nobody is talking about the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are still in the game. At this precise point, anything is possible.

However, for many of the same reasons, this period has also been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. For while no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? Please a decision now.

The Player as The Prime Example

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player caught between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to withhold final conclusions, to let technical development and strategic understanding to mature. And the demand to generate permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, context-free condemnations and meaningless contrasts, a square that can not truly be circled.

It is not my aim to provide a substantive analysis of Sesko's time at Manchester United to date. He has started on four occasions in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and had a grand total of 116 touches. What precisely are we analysing? Nor will I attempt to replicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts argue thrillingly on a podcast over whether he needs ten strikes to be a success this year (Neville), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I loved watching Sesko at Leipzig: a powerful, screeching racing car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: given the freedom to rampage but also the leeway to fail. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most pitiless gulf between the time and air he requires, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

We saw a case of this over the international break, when a viral chart handily informed us that the player had been judged – decisively – the worst signing of the recent market by a survey of 20 agents. Naturally, the media are not the only ones in this. Club channels, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with skin in the game is now basically aligned along the identical rules, an ecosystem explicitly geared for provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to us? Are we aware, on any level, what this endless stream of aggravation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of being a player in the middle of this, knowing on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about them is now basically material, product, open-source property to be repackaged and traded.

And yes, in part this is because United are United, the entity that continues to feed the cycle, a major institution that must constantly be generating the strong emotions. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, a swing of opinion most visibly and harshly glimpsed at this time of year, about a month after the window has closed. All summer long we have been desiring footballers, praising them, salivating over them. Now, only a handful of games later, many of those same players are now being dismissed as broken goods. Is it time to worry about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that Sesko faces their rivals on Sunday: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at home in the Premier League and somehow in their own state of feverish crisis, like submitting a missing person’s report on a person who popped to the store 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Their star past his prime. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. The coach bald.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to inflect the way we watch it, an whole competition repivoted around discussion topics and immediate responses, an activity that happens in the backdrop while we scroll through our devices, unable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and further hot takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit at present. But in a way, we're all losing a part of the experience here.