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Imagine this: a happy Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Next, juxtapose that with a dejected Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he's missed an open goal. Don't worry finding an actual photo of him missing; background information is your adversary. Now, add statistics in a big, silly font. Remember the emojis. Share the image across all platforms.

Will you mention that Højlund's goal count features scores in the Champions League while his counterpart isn't playing in continental tournaments? Of course not. Nor will you note that four of the Dane'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. If you run online for a large outlet, raw interaction is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

So the cycle of online material spins. The next job is to scan a lengthy interview with the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "weird". Just before, where Schmeichel prefaces his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. No one needs that. Simply ensure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. The audience will be outraged.

The Season of Potential and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my favourite periods to watch football. Leaves fall, winds shift, squads and strategies are still fresh, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the season ahead are staking their claims. The transfer window is closed. Nobody is mentioning the quadruple yet. All teams are in contention. Right now, all is possibility.

However, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my least favourite times to read about football. For while nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league right now? We need an answer now.

The Player as Patient Zero

In many ways, Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player caught between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to delay final conclusions, to let layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to produce permanent definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of takes and memes, out-of-context condemnations and pointless comparisons, a square that can not truly be circled.

I do not propose to offer a substantive evaluation of Sesko's time at United so far. He has started on four occasions 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 precisely are we evaluating? Nor will I attempt to duplicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits duel thrillingly on a podcast over whether he needs 10 goals to be a success this year (Neville), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I enjoyed watching him at his former club: a big, screeching sports car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: given the freedom to attack but also the freedom to fail. And in part this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in roughly the duration it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most ruthless gulf between the patience and space he needs, and the time and air he is going to get.

There was a case of this over the international break, when a viral chart conveniently informed us that Sesko had been judged – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. And of course, the media are by no means alone in such behavior. Team social media, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of fake followers: all parties with a vested interest is now basically operating along the same principles, an environment deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite sluice of aggravation is doing to our minds? Separate from the essential weirdness of playing in the center of this, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about players is now basically content, product, public property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that keeps nourishing the cycle, a major institution that must always be generating the big feelings. However, in part this is a temporary malaise, a swing of judgment most clearly and harshly glimpsed at this time of year, about a month after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been coveting footballers, praising them, salivating over them. Now, only a handful of games later, a lot of those very players are now being dismissed as failures. Is it time to be concerned about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that he meets their rivals on Sunday: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at home in the Premier League and somehow in their own state of feverish crisis, like submitting a a report on someone who popped to the store 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah finished. The striker an expensive flop. 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 immediate responses, something that occurs in the background while we scroll through our phones, incapable to detach from the saline drip of takes and more takes. Perhaps Sesko taking the hit at present. But in a way, we're all losing a part of the experience here.