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Picture this: a happy the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Next, juxtapose it with a dejected the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, looking as if he just missed a sitter. Do not bother finding a real picture of that miss; context is the enemy. Then, add statistics in a big, comical font. Remember the emojis. Share it everywhere.

Will you point out that Højlund's tally includes scores in the premier European competition while his counterpart isn't playing in Europe? Of course not. And would you highlight that four of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and creates far more chances. If you manage social media for a large outlet, raw interaction is your livelihood, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

So the wheel of online material spins. Your next task is to scan a lengthy interview with the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "strange". Just before, where Schmeichel qualifies his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. Nobody needs that. Simply make sure "weird" and "Sesko" appear together in the headline. People will be outraged.

This Time of Promise and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has long been one of my preferred times to observe football. Leaves fall, winds shift, squads and strategies are still fresh, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the season ahead are planting their flags. The transfer window is closed. No one is talking about the quadruple yet. Everyone are in contention. At this precise point, all is possibility.

Yet, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. For while no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league at this moment? Please an answer now.

The Player as The Prime Example

In many ways, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The need to withhold definitive judgment, allowing technical development and strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to generate permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, context-free criticisms and meaningless comparisons, a square that can never truly be solved.

It is not my aim to offer a substantive evaluation of Sesko's time at Manchester United to date. 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 analysing? Nor do I propose to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts argue passionately on a popular show over whether he needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this season (one pundit), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I loved watching him at Leipzig: a powerful, screeching racing car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: given the freedom to attack but also the freedom to fail. Partly this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most pitiless gap between the patience and space he needs, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

There was an example of this during the international break, when a viral chart conveniently stated that Sesko had been deemed – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a poll of 20 agents. And of course, the press are by no means alone in such behavior. Club channels, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of fake followers: everybody with a vested interest is now basically operating along the same principles, an environment deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? Are we aware, on any level, what this infinite stream of irritation is doing to our brains? Separate from the inherent strangeness of playing in the middle of it all, aware on some surreal butterfly-effect level that every single thing about players is now basically content, product, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

Indeed, partly this is because United are United, the corpse that continues to feed the cycle, a major institution that must always be producing the big feelings. But also, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of opinion most visibly and harshly glimpsed at this season, about a month after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been desiring footballers, eulogising them, salivating over them. Now, only a handful of games later, many of those very players are already being disdained as failures. Is it time to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that he faces their rivals on Sunday: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and somehow in their own state of perceived turmoil, like filing a a report on someone who went to the store 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Their star finished. Alexander Isak waste of money. Arne Slot bald.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football itself, to inflect the way we watch it, an entire sport repivoted around talking points and immediate responses, an activity that happens in the background while we scroll through our devices, incapable to disconnect from the saline drip of takes and further hot takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit right now. But in a way, everyone is sacrificing a part of the experience here.