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Picture this: a smiling Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, juxtapose it with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, appearing like he's missed a sitter. Do not worry finding an actual photo of that miss; context is your adversary. Now, add some goal stats in a large, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Post the image everywhere.

Would you mention that Højlund's goal count includes strikes in the Champions League while Sesko does not compete in continental tournaments? Certainly not. And will you note that several of Højlund's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Slovenia and creates many more chances. If you manage social media for a large outlet, pure engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and context is the thing to avoid.

So the cycle of online material spins. The next job is to scan a lengthy interview featuring Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "weird". Just before, where he prefaces his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. No one wants that. Simply ensure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired in the headline. The audience will be outraged.

This Time of Promise and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has long been one of my favourite times to watch football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are newly formed, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the season ahead are planting their flags. The transfer window is shut. No one is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are still in the game. At this precise point, all is possibility.

However, for many of the same reasons, this period has also been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. For while nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? We need an answer immediately.

Sesko as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player caught between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to withhold final conclusions, to let layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to produce instant verdicts, a conveyor belt of opinions and memes, out-of-context condemnations and pointless comparisons, a puzzle that can not truly be circled.

I do not propose to provide a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's stint at United to date. The guy has started on four occasions in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and taken a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we analysing? Nor will I attempt to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits argue passionately on a popular show over whether he needs 10 goals to be a success this year (Neville), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching Sesko at Leipzig: a big, screeching sports car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: afforded the freedom to rampage but also the leeway to miss. Partly this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most pitiless gulf between the patience and space he needs, 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 deemed – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the recent market by a survey of 20 agents. And of course, the media are by no means alone in this. Team social media, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of fake followers: all parties with skin in the game is now essentially operating along the same principles, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to us? Do we realize, on any level, what this endless sluice of aggravation is doing to our brains? Separate from the essential weirdness of being a player in the middle of it all, knowing on some surreal chain-reaction level that every single thing about them is now essentially content, commodity, public property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, partly this is because United are United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a major institution that must always be generating the big feelings. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of judgment most clearly and cruelly glimpsed at this season, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. All summer long we have been desiring players, praising them, drooling over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are already being disdained as broken goods. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker wise? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that he faces their rivals on Sunday: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at home in the league and somehow in their own state of perceived turmoil, like submitting a missing person’s report on a person who went to the store half an hour ago. Too open. Their star finished. The striker waste of money. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has started to replace football the actual game, to influence the way we watch it, an entire sport reoriented around talking points and reaction, something that happens in the backdrop while we browse through our phones, incapable to detach from the saline drip of takes and further hot takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit at present. However, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience here.