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Picture this: a happy Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Now, juxtapose it with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he just missed an open goal. Do not bother locating a real picture of him missing; context is your adversary. Now, include statistics in a large, silly font. Don't forget the emojis. Share it everywhere.

Will you point out that Højlund's goal count includes strikes in the Champions League while Sesko isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. Nor would you highlight 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 many more scoring opportunities. If you run social media for a large outlet, pure engagement is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

Thus the wheel of content turns. The next job is to scan a 44-minute interview featuring the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he prefaces his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. No one needs that. Just ensure "strange" and "the player" appear together in the title. People will be furious.

This Time of Promise and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has long been one of my preferred times to watch football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, squads and strategies are still fresh, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the coming months are staking their claims. The transfer window is closed. Nobody is talking about the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are in contention. Right now, anything is possible.

However, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. For while nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league right now? Please an answer immediately.

The Player as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player caught between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The need to withhold definitive judgment, allowing layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to mature. And the imperative to produce permanent definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of opinions and memes, context-free condemnations and pointless contrasts, a square that can never truly be circled.

I do not propose to provide a substantive evaluation of Sesko's time at United so far. He has been in the lineup on four occasions in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and had a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we evaluating? Nor do I propose to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits duel passionately on a popular show over whether he needs 10 goals to be a success this year (one pundit), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I enjoyed watching Sesko at his former club: a big, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: afforded the license to rampage but also the leeway to fail. And in part this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in roughly the duration it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most ruthless gulf between the time and air he needs, and the opportunity he is going to get.

We saw a case of this during the international break, when a viral infographic conveniently stated that Sesko had been deemed – decisively – the worst signing of the recent market by a survey of football representatives. And of course, the press are by no means alone in such behavior. Club channels, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: everybody with skin in the game is now essentially aligned along the identical rules, an ecosystem explicitly geared for provocation.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? Do we realize, on any level, what this endless stream of irritation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of playing in the middle of it all, knowing on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about players is now basically material, commodity, public property to be repackaged and traded.

Indeed, in part this is because United are United, the entity that keeps nourishing the cycle, a major institution that must always be generating the big feelings. But also, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of judgment most visibly and harshly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been coveting players, eulogising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, many of those same players are already being disdained as broken goods. Should we start to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the point of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that Sesko faces Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the league and yet in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like submitting a missing person’s report on someone who popped to the store half an hour ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah finished. The striker waste of money. Arne Slot bald.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to inflect the way we view it, an entire sport repivoted around talking points and immediate responses, something that occurs in the background while we scroll through our devices, unable to detach from the saline drip of takes and further hot takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit at present. But in a way, everyone is sacrificing something in this process.