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Imagine this: a happy Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, juxtapose that with a dejected Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he's missed an open goal. Do not worry finding an actual photo of that miss; background information is your adversary. Now, add some goal stats in a large, comical font. Remember some emoticons. Post it everywhere.

Would you point out that Højlund's goal count includes scores in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in continental tournaments? Of course not. And would you highlight that four of Højlund's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and generates far more chances. You manage online for a large outlet, raw engagement is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and context is the thing to avoid.

Thus the wheel of online material spins. The next job is to scan a 44-minute podcast with Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where Schmeichel prefaces his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. Nobody wants that. Simply ensure "weird" and "the player" are paired in the title. People will be outraged.

This Time of Potential and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my favourite periods to watch football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, squads and strategies are newly formed, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the season ahead are planting their flags. The summer market is closed. Nobody is talking about the quadruple yet. All teams are in contention. At this precise point, all is possibility.

However, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my most disliked times to read about football. For while nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league right now? We need a decision immediately.

Sesko as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The need to delay definitive judgment, to let technical development and strategic understanding to mature. And the imperative to produce permanent definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of opinions and memes, out-of-context criticisms and meaningless contrasts, a puzzle that can never truly be circled.

It is not my aim to offer a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's time at United to date. He has started on four occasions in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and had a mere of 116 touches. What exactly 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 duel passionately on a podcast over whether he needs 10 goals to be a success this season (Neville), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I enjoyed watching Sesko at his former club: a big, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: given the freedom to rampage but also the freedom to miss. Partly this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in roughly the duration it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most ruthless gap between the time and air he requires, and the opportunity he is going to get.

We saw an example of this over the international break, when a widely shared infographic handily informed us that Sesko had been deemed – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the press are by no means alone in this. Club channels, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with a vested interest is now essentially operating along the identical rules, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to ourselves? Do we realize, on any level, what this infinite sluice of irritation is doing to our brains? Separate from the essential weirdness of playing in the center of it all, aware on some surreal butterfly-effect level that every single thing about players is now essentially material, product, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that keeps nourishing the cycle, a big club that must constantly be generating the strong emotions. However, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of judgment most clearly and cruelly glimpsed at this season, about a month after the window has closed. All summer long we have been desiring players, praising them, drooling over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, a lot of those same players are already being dismissed as broken goods. Should we start to worry about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need their striker necessary? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that he meets their rivals on the weekend: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at home in the Premier League and yet in their own state of feverish crisis, like submitting a a report on a person who popped to the store 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Their star past his prime. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. Arne Slot bald.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has started to replace football the actual game, to influence the way we view it, an entire sport reoriented around discussion topics and reaction, something that happens in the backdrop while we scroll through our phones, incapable to detach from the constant flow of opinions and more takes. It may be this player bearing the brunt at present. But in a way, we're all losing a part of the experience here.