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Imagine this: a happy the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Now, place it with a dejected Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he's missed a sitter. Do not worry finding an actual photo of that miss; background information is your adversary. Now, include statistics in a large, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Share 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 highlight that several of Højlund's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is much stronger to Slovenia and generates many more scoring opportunities. If you run online for a large outlet, raw interaction is what pays the bills, United are the biggest draw, and context is your sworn enemy.

So the cycle of online material turns. The next job is to sift through a lengthy interview featuring Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "weird". Just before, where he prefaces his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. No one wants that. Just make sure "weird" and "Sesko" appear together in the title. The audience will be furious.

This Time of Promise and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has long been one of my favourite periods to observe football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, squads and strategies are still fresh, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the coming months are staking their claims. The transfer window is shut. Nobody is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are still in the game. At this precise point, anything is possible.

Yet, for similar reasons, this period has also been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. For while no outcomes are decided, 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 a decision immediately.

Sesko as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player caught between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to delay definitive judgment, to let layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to mature. And the demand to produce instant definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of takes and memes, context-free condemnations and pointless comparisons, a square that can not truly be circled.

I do not propose to offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's time at United so far. He has been in the lineup four times in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and had a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we analysing? And will I attempt to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits duel thrillingly on a popular show over whether he needs 10 goals to be a success this year (one pundit), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I enjoyed watching Sesko at his former club: a big, fast racing car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: given 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 "harsh judgments" are handed down in about the time it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most ruthless gulf between the time and air he needs, and the opportunity he is going to get.

We saw a case of this during the national team pause, when a widely shared infographic conveniently stated that Sesko had been deemed – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a survey of football representatives. And of course, the press are by no means alone in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of fake followers: all parties with a vested interest is now basically operating along the identical rules, an ecosystem deliberately geared for provocation.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to ourselves? Do we realize, on any level, what this endless stream of aggravation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of playing in the middle of it all, aware on a bizarre 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 entity that keeps nourishing the cycle, a major institution that must constantly be generating the strong emotions. However, partly this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of opinion most visibly and cruelly glimpsed at this season, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been coveting players, praising them, salivating over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, many of those same players are now being disdained as broken goods. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that Sesko faces Liverpool on the weekend: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at home in the league and somehow in their own situation of feverish crisis, like submitting a a report on a person who went to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah finished. Alexander Isak waste of money. The coach bald.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football itself, to influence the way we watch it, an whole competition reoriented around discussion topics and reaction, something that happens in the backdrop while we browse through our devices, incapable to detach from the constant flow of opinions and further hot takes. Perhaps this player taking the hit at present. But in a way, everyone is losing a part of the experience here.