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Picture this: a happy Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, place that with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Do not bother finding an actual photo of that miss; background information is the enemy. Then, include some goal stats in a big, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Post it across all platforms.

Will you point out that Højlund's tally features strikes in the Champions League while his counterpart does not compete in Europe? Of course not. And will you highlight that several of Højlund's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is much stronger to Slovenia and generates far more scoring opportunities. If you manage social media for a major brand, raw interaction is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the prime target, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

So the cycle of online material spins. Your next task is to scan a lengthy interview featuring the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "weird". Just before, where he prefaces his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. No one needs that. Just ensure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. The audience will be furious.

This Time of Potential and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my favourite times to watch football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, squads and strategies are still fresh, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the season ahead are staking their claims. The summer market is closed. Nobody is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are in contention. Right now, anything is possible.

Yet, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my least favourite times to read about football. Because although no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? We need a decision now.

The Player as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The need to withhold final conclusions, allowing technical development and tactical sophistication to develop. And the imperative to produce instant definitive judgment, a constant stream of takes and memes, out-of-context criticisms and meaningless comparisons, a puzzle that can not truly be circled.

I do not propose to offer a substantive evaluation of Sesko's stint at Manchester United so far. He has been in the lineup four times in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and had a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we analysing? And do I propose to duplicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits argue passionately on a podcast over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be a success this year (one pundit), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I enjoyed watching him at his former club: a powerful, screeching racing car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: given the freedom to rampage but also the leeway to fail. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in roughly the duration it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most pitiless gap between the patience and space he needs, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

There was a case of this during the international break, when a viral infographic conveniently stated that the player had been judged – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a survey of 20 agents. Naturally, the media are not the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially operating along the identical rules, an environment explicitly geared for provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? Do we realize, on some level, what this infinite sluice of irritation is doing to our minds? Separate from the essential weirdness of playing in the center of it all, aware on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that each aspect about them is now essentially content, commodity, public property to be repackaged and traded.

Indeed, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that keeps nourishing the narrative, a major institution that must constantly be producing the big feelings. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of opinion most clearly and harshly glimpsed at this season, about a month after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been coveting footballers, praising them, salivating over them. Now, only a handful of games later, a lot of those same players are already being disdained as broken goods. Is it time to be concerned about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that Sesko meets Liverpool on the weekend: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at home in the league and somehow in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like submitting a a report on a person who popped to the store 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Their star past his prime. The striker an expensive flop. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Perhaps we have failed to understand 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 backdrop while we scroll through our phones, incapable to disconnect from the saline drip of takes and more takes. Perhaps Sesko bearing the brunt right now. However, everyone is losing something in this process.