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Picture the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Now, juxtapose it with a dejected Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, appearing like he just missed an open goal. Don't bother finding a real picture of him missing; context is the enemy. Now, include some goal stats in a large, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Post it everywhere.

Would you point out that Højlund's goal count features strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko does not compete in continental tournaments? Of course not. And will you highlight that several of the Dane's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and creates far more chances. If you run social media for a large outlet, pure engagement is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

So the cycle of content turns. The next job is to sift through a lengthy interview with the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "weird". Just before, where he qualifies his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. Nobody needs that. Just make sure "strange" and "the player" appear together in the headline. People will be outraged.

The Season of Potential and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has long been one of my favourite times to observe football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, squads and strategies are newly formed, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the coming months are staking their claims. The transfer window is shut. No one is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are in contention. Right now, anything is possible.

However, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. For while nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league at this moment? We need a decision now.

Sesko as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to delay final conclusions, to let layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to develop. And the demand to generate permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and memes, out-of-context condemnations and pointless contrasts, a puzzle that can not truly be solved.

I do not propose to offer a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's time at Manchester United to date. The guy has started on four occasions in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and taken a mere of 116 touches. What exactly are we evaluating? Nor will I attempt to duplicate the pundits' notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits duel passionately on a popular show over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this year (one pundit), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching Sesko at his former club: a big, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: given the license to rampage but also the leeway to miss. Partly this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most ruthless gulf between the time and air he needs, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

There was an example of this over the international break, when a widely shared infographic handily stated that the player had been deemed – decisively – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a poll of football representatives. And of course, the press are not alone in such behavior. Team social media, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: all parties with skin in the game is now basically aligned along the same principles, an ecosystem explicitly geared for controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? Are we aware, on any level, what this endless stream of aggravation is doing to our brains? Separate from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the center of it all, aware on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that each aspect about players is now basically material, commodity, public property to be packaged and exchanged.

And yes, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that continues to feed the cycle, a major institution that must always be generating the strong emotions. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of judgment most visibly and harshly observed at this time of year, about a month after the window has closed. All summer long we have been coveting players, eulogising them, drooling over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, many of those very players are already being dismissed as broken goods. Should we start to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that Sesko meets their rivals on the weekend: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at home in the league and somehow in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like submitting a missing person’s report on a person who popped to the shops 30 minutes ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah finished. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to influence the way we watch it, an whole competition repivoted around talking points and immediate responses, something that occurs in the background while we scroll through our phones, unable to disconnect from the constant flow of opinions and more takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit right now. But in a way, everyone is sacrificing something here.