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Imagine this: a smiling Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Next, juxtapose that with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Don't bother locating a real picture of him missing; context is the enemy. Then, add statistics in a big, silly font. Remember the emojis. Post it everywhere.

Will you mention that Højlund's goal count includes strikes in the Champions League while Sesko does not compete in Europe? Certainly not. Nor will you note that four of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is much stronger to Slovenia and creates many more scoring opportunities. If you manage online for a large outlet, pure interaction is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the prime target, and context is your sworn enemy.

So the wheel of online material turns. Your next task is to scan a lengthy interview with Peter Schmeichel and find 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"... yes, cut that. No one needs that. Just ensure "weird" and "the player" appear together in the title. People will be outraged.

The Season of Promise and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has long been one of my favourite periods to watch football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, the teams and tactics are newly formed, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the coming months are planting their flags. The transfer window is shut. Nobody is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. Everyone 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 read about football. For while nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league at this moment? Please an answer now.

The Player as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player caught between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to delay final conclusions, allowing layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to develop. And the imperative to generate permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and memes, out-of-context criticisms and meaningless comparisons, a puzzle that can never truly be solved.

I do not propose to offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's time at Manchester United to date. He has been in the lineup on four occasions in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and had a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we analysing? And will I attempt to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts argue thrillingly on a podcast over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this year (one pundit), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I loved watching Sesko at Leipzig: a big, fast racing car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: given the license to attack but also the freedom to fail. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most pitiless gap between the patience and space he requires, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

There was an example of this during the national team pause, when a viral infographic conveniently stated that Sesko had been deemed – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the recent market by a survey of football representatives. Naturally, the press are by no means the only ones in this. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: everybody with skin in the game is now essentially aligned along the identical rules, an environment deliberately nosed towards provocation.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to us? Do we realize, on some level, what this infinite sluice of aggravation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the center of this, aware on some surreal chain-reaction level that every single thing about players is now essentially material, commodity, public property to be repackaged and exchanged.

Indeed, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a major institution that must always be generating the big feelings. However, in part this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of opinion most visibly and harshly glimpsed at this season, about a month after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been coveting footballers, eulogising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, many 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 point of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that Sesko meets their rivals on the weekend: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the league and yet in their own state of feverish crisis, like filing a a report on someone who went to the store 30 minutes ago. Too open. Their star finished. The striker waste of money. Arne Slot bald.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has started to replace football the actual game, to inflect the way we watch it, an entire sport reoriented around discussion topics and immediate responses, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we scroll through our phones, unable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and further hot takes. It may be this player taking the hit at present. But in a way, everyone is sacrificing a part of the experience here.