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Picture the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Next, place it with a dejected the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Do not bother finding an actual photo of him missing; context is the enemy. Now, include some goal stats in a large, comical font. Remember some emoticons. Post it across all platforms.

Will you point out that Højlund's goal count features scores in the premier European competition while his counterpart does not compete in Europe? Certainly not. And would you note that four of Højlund's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and creates many more chances. If you run online for a large outlet, raw engagement is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and context is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of online material turns. Your next task is to sift through a 44-minute interview with the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "weird". Just before, 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. The audience will be outraged.

This Time of Potential and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my preferred periods to observe football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, the teams and tactics are still fresh, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the coming months are planting their flags. The summer market is shut. No one is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. All teams are still in the game. At this precise point, anything is possible.

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 resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league right now? Please an answer now.

The Player as The Prime Example

In many ways, Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The need to withhold final conclusions, allowing layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to mature. And the imperative to generate permanent definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of takes and memes, out-of-context condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a square that can never truly be circled.

I do not propose to provide a substantive analysis of Sesko's time at Manchester United to date. He has started four times in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and taken a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly 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 thrillingly on a podcast over whether he needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this season (Neville), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I enjoyed watching him at his former club: a big, screeching racing car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: given the freedom to rampage but also the freedom to miss. And in part this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in about the time it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most pitiless gulf between the patience and space he needs, and the time and air he is going to get.

We saw a case of this during the international break, when a widely shared chart conveniently stated that Sesko had been judged – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. And of course, the media are not alone in this. Club channels, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with skin in the game is now basically operating along the identical rules, an environment explicitly geared for provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to ourselves? Do we realize, on some level, what this endless sluice of irritation is doing to our brains? Separate from the essential weirdness of playing in the middle of this, knowing on some surreal chain-reaction level that every single thing about players is now basically material, product, public property to be repackaged and exchanged.

Indeed, partly this is because United are United, the entity that continues to feed the narrative, a big club that must always be producing the strong emotions. 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 window has closed. All summer long we have been desiring players, eulogising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, many of those same players are now being disdained as broken goods. Should we start to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need their striker wise? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that he meets their rivals on Sunday: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and somehow in their own state of feverish crisis, like filing a a report on someone who went to the shops half an hour ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah past his prime. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. The coach bald.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football itself, to inflect the way we watch it, an entire sport reoriented around discussion topics and immediate responses, an activity that happens in the background while we browse through our phones, incapable to disconnect from the saline drip of takes and further hot takes. Perhaps Sesko bearing the brunt right now. But in a way, everyone is sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.