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Picture the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Now, juxtapose it with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Don't bother locating a real picture of him missing; background information is the enemy. Now, include statistics in a big, silly font. Remember the emojis. Post the image across all platforms.

Would you mention that Højlund's tally includes scores in the premier European competition while Sesko does not compete in continental tournaments? Certainly not. Nor will you note that four of Højlund's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that his national team is much stronger to Slovenia and generates far more scoring opportunities. You manage online for a large outlet, pure engagement is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

So the wheel of online material turns. The next job is to scan a 44-minute interview featuring the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". Just before, where he prefaces his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. Nobody wants that. Simply make sure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired 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, winds shift, squads and strategies are still fresh, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the season ahead are planting their flags. The transfer window is closed. No one is mentioning 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 most disliked times to consume news on football. Because although no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is resurgent. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league right now? We need a decision immediately.

The Player as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The need to delay definitive judgment, allowing technical development and tactical sophistication to develop. And the imperative to generate instant definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of takes and memes, out-of-context condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a square that can not truly be circled.

I do not propose to provide a substantive evaluation of Sesko's time at Manchester United to date. The guy has been in the lineup four times in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and had a grand total of 116 touches. What exactly are we evaluating? And do I propose to duplicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts argue passionately on a popular show over whether he needs ten strikes to be a success this year (Neville), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I enjoyed watching him at his former club: a powerful, fast racing car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: given the freedom to rampage but also the leeway to miss. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" 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 patience and space he requires, and the time and air he is going to get.

We saw a case of this during the national team pause, when a viral chart handily informed us that the player had been judged – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a survey of 20 agents. And of course, the press are by no means the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: all parties with skin in the game is now essentially aligned along the same principles, an ecosystem deliberately geared for provocation.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite sluice of irritation is doing to our brains? Separate from the essential weirdness of being a player in the center of it all, aware on some surreal chain-reaction level that every single thing about players is now basically content, commodity, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that continues to feed the narrative, a big club that must constantly be generating the strong emotions. But also, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of opinion most clearly and harshly glimpsed at this season, about a month after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been desiring footballers, praising them, drooling over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, a lot of those same players are now being disdained as broken goods. Is it time to worry about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker wise? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that he meets their rivals on the weekend: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at home in the league and yet in their own state of feverish crisis, like filing a missing person’s report on a person who went to the shops half an hour ago. Too open. Their star past his prime. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Perhaps 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 reoriented around talking points and immediate responses, something that happens in the background while we scroll through our devices, incapable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. Perhaps Sesko taking the hit at present. But in a way, we're all losing something in this process.