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Picture this: a smiling the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Next, juxtapose it with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, looking as if he's missed a sitter. Don't bother finding a real picture of that miss; background information is your adversary. Then, include statistics in a big, silly font. Remember the emojis. Share it across all platforms.

Will you mention that Højlund's tally includes strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko does not compete in Europe? Certainly not. And will you highlight that four of Højlund's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and creates far more scoring opportunities. If you manage online for a large outlet, raw interaction is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of online material spins. The next job is to sift through a 44-minute interview with the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". Just before, where he qualifies his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. No one wants that. Just ensure "strange" and "the player" are paired in the headline. People will be furious.

This Time of Promise and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has long been one of my favourite periods to observe football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, squads and strategies are still fresh, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the coming months are staking their claims. The summer market is shut. No one is mentioning the quadruple yet. Everyone are in contention. At this precise point, all is possibility.

However, for similar reasons, this period has also been one of my most disliked times to read about football. Because although 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 top performer in the league at this moment? Please an answer now.

Sesko as The Prime Example

In many ways, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player caught between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The need to delay definitive judgment, allowing technical development and strategic understanding to develop. And the imperative to generate instant definitive judgment, a constant stream of opinions and jokes, out-of-context condemnations and pointless comparisons, a square that can never truly be circled.

It is not my aim to offer a in-depth analysis of Sesko's time at United to date. The guy has started four times in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and had a grand total of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? Nor do I propose to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits argue passionately on a podcast over whether he needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this year (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I loved watching Sesko at Leipzig: a powerful, fast sports car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: afforded the freedom to attack but also the leeway to miss. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in about the time it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most pitiless gap between the time and air he requires, and the opportunity he is going to get.

There was a case of this during the national team pause, when a widely shared infographic handily informed us that Sesko had been judged – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a survey of 20 agents. And of course, the media are not alone in this. Club channels, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of fake followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially aligned along the identical rules, an environment explicitly nosed towards provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to us? Are we aware, on any level, what this endless sluice of aggravation is doing to our minds? Separate from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the center of this, knowing on some surreal chain-reaction level that each aspect about them is now essentially content, commodity, public property to be packaged and exchanged.

And yes, partly this is because United are United, the corpse that continues to feed the cycle, a major institution that must constantly be producing the big feelings. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of judgment most clearly and cruelly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been coveting footballers, eulogising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those same players are now being dismissed as broken goods. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that Sesko faces their rivals on the weekend: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at home in the Premier League and yet in their own state of feverish crisis, like submitting a a report on someone who popped to the store 30 minutes ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah past his prime. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. Arne Slot bald.

Maybe 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 watch it, an whole competition repivoted around discussion topics and reaction, an activity that happens in the background while we browse through our devices, unable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. Perhaps this player taking the hit at present. However, everyone is sacrificing something in this process.