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Imagine this: a smiling the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Next, place it with a dejected the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, appearing like he just missed a sitter. Don't bother locating a real picture of him missing; context is your adversary. Now, add statistics in a large, silly font. Remember the emojis. Post it across all platforms.

Will you point out that Højlund's goal count features scores in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. And will you highlight that several of Højlund's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that Denmark is much stronger to Slovenia and creates many more chances. You manage social media for a large outlet, raw engagement is your livelihood, United are the biggest draw, and context is the thing to avoid.

Thus the wheel of content turns. The next job is to scan a 44-minute interview featuring the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "strange". Just before, where he qualifies his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. Nobody wants that. Simply ensure "strange" and "Sesko" appear together in the headline. The audience will be outraged.

The Season of Potential and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has long been one of my preferred times to observe football. Leaves fall, winds shift, the teams and tactics are newly formed, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the coming months are staking their claims. The transfer window is closed. No one is mentioning the quadruple yet. Everyone are still in the game. Right now, anything is possible.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, this period has also been one of my least favourite times to read about football. For while no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is reborn. The German talent has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league right now? We need an answer now.

Sesko as Patient Zero

In many ways, Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to withhold definitive judgment, to let technical development and tactical sophistication to develop. And the demand to produce permanent definitive judgment, a constant stream of takes and jokes, context-free criticisms and pointless comparisons, a puzzle that can not truly be circled.

I do not propose to provide a in-depth analysis of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. The guy has started on four occasions in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and taken a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we analysing? Nor do I propose to replicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts argue passionately on a podcast over whether he needs ten strikes to be a success this year (Neville), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I enjoyed watching him at his former club: a big, fast racing car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: afforded the freedom to rampage but also the leeway to miss. And in part this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving 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 widest and most pitiless gap between the time and air he requires, and the opportunity he is going to get.

We saw an example of this during the national team pause, when a viral chart conveniently stated that the player had been deemed – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the media are not the only ones in such behavior. Club channels, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: all parties with skin in the game is now essentially aligned along the identical rules, an environment deliberately nosed towards provocation.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to us? Are we aware, on any level, what this endless sluice of aggravation is doing to our minds? Separate from the inherent strangeness of playing in the middle of it all, knowing on some surreal butterfly-effect level that each aspect about them is now basically material, product, public property to be repackaged and exchanged.

And yes, partly 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 pendulum of opinion most visibly and harshly glimpsed at this season, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been coveting players, praising them, drooling 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 worry about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that Sesko faces their rivals on Sunday: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the league and somehow in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like filing a missing person’s report on someone who went to the shops 30 minutes ago. Too open. Their star finished. The striker waste of money. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has started to replace football the actual game, to influence the way we view it, an whole competition repivoted around discussion topics and immediate responses, something that happens in the background while we scroll through our phones, incapable to detach from the constant flow of opinions and further hot takes. Perhaps Sesko taking the hit right now. But in a way, we're all losing a part of the experience in this process.