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Picture this: a happy the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Next, place it with a dejected Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he just missed a sitter. Do not bother finding an actual photo of that miss; background information is your adversary. Then, add statistics in a big, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Post it across all platforms.

Will you mention that Højlund's goal count features scores in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in continental tournaments? Of course not. Nor will you note that several of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that his national team is far superior to Slovenia and generates many more chances. If you run online for a large outlet, pure engagement is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and context is the thing to avoid.

Thus the cycle of content spins. Your next task is to scan a 44-minute interview featuring the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "weird". Just before, where he prefaces his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. No one wants that. Simply ensure "strange" and "Sesko" appear together in the headline. The audience will be furious.

The Season of Potential and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my favourite periods to watch football. Leaves fall, winds shift, the teams and tactics are still fresh, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the coming months are staking their claims. The transfer window is closed. Nobody is talking about the quadruple yet. Everyone are in contention. At this precise point, all is possibility.

Yet, for similar reasons, this period has also been one of my most disliked times to read about football. For while no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? Please a decision immediately.

Sesko as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player caught between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to delay final conclusions, to let technical development and strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to generate permanent definitive judgment, a constant stream of opinions and memes, context-free condemnations and pointless contrasts, a puzzle that can not truly be circled.

It is not my aim to offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. The guy has been in the lineup on four occasions in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and taken a grand total of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? Nor do I propose to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts duel passionately on a popular show over whether he needs 10 goals to be a success this season (one pundit), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at his former club: a big, fast sports car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: given the license to attack 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 "brutal verdicts" are handed down in about the time it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most ruthless gap between the patience and space he requires, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

We saw a case of this over the national team pause, when a viral infographic conveniently informed us that Sesko had been judged – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a survey of football representatives. And of course, the press are not alone in this. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: everybody with a vested interest is now essentially aligned along the same principles, an ecosystem explicitly geared for provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite stream of irritation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of playing in the center of it all, aware on some surreal chain-reaction level that each aspect about them is now essentially content, commodity, public property to be packaged and exchanged.

Indeed, partly this is because United are United, the entity that continues to feed the narrative, a major institution that must constantly be generating the big feelings. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a swing of opinion most clearly and cruelly glimpsed at this season, about a month after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been desiring footballers, eulogising them, drooling over them. Now, only a handful of games later, a lot of those same players are now being disdained as broken goods. Should we start to worry about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker wise? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that he faces Liverpool on the weekend: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the Premier League and yet in their own state of feverish crisis, like filing a a report on a person who popped to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah past his prime. Alexander Isak waste of money. The coach losing his hair.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football itself, to inflect the way we view it, an entire sport reoriented around talking points and immediate responses, something that happens in the backdrop while we browse through our phones, unable to detach from the saline drip of opinions and further hot takes. Perhaps this player bearing the brunt at present. However, we're all losing a part of the experience in this process.