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Imagine the following: a smiling the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Next, juxtapose that with a dejected the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, appearing like he's missed a sitter. Do not worry finding an actual photo of that miss; background information is the enemy. Then, add statistics in a big, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Share it across all platforms.

Will you mention that Højlund's goal count features scores in the Champions League while his counterpart isn't playing in Europe? Of course not. And will you note that several of Højlund's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and generates many more chances. If you run online for a large outlet, pure engagement is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

So the cycle of content turns. Your next task is to scan a lengthy podcast with the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "strange". Just before, where he prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. No one needs that. Just make sure "strange" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. People will be furious.

The Season of Promise and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has long been one of my preferred times to watch football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, squads and strategies are newly formed, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the season ahead are planting their flags. The summer market is closed. No one is mentioning the quadruple yet. All teams are still in the game. At this precise point, anything is possible.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, this period has also been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is reborn. The German talent has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league right now? Please an answer now.

The Player as Patient Zero

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to delay definitive judgment, to let technical development and strategic understanding to mature. And the demand to generate permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and memes, context-free criticisms and meaningless comparisons, a puzzle that can not truly be solved.

I do not propose to offer a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's time at United so far. He has been in the lineup four times in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and had a mere of 116 touches. What precisely are we evaluating? Nor do I propose to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts argue thrillingly on a podcast over whether he needs ten strikes to be a success this year (one pundit), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I enjoyed watching him at his former club: a powerful, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: given the license to attack but also the leeway to miss. Partly this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most ruthless gap between the time and air he requires, and the time and air he is going to get.

There was a case of this over the national team pause, when a widely shared infographic conveniently stated that the player had been deemed – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a survey of football representatives. And of course, the press are not the only ones in such behavior. Club channels, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: everybody with skin in the game is now basically aligned along the identical rules, an environment explicitly geared for provocation.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to ourselves? Do we realize, on some level, what this endless stream 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 each aspect about them is now basically material, product, public property to be repackaged and traded.

And yes, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that continues to feed the cycle, a big club that must always be generating the strong emotions. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of judgment most clearly and cruelly observed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been coveting players, eulogising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, many of those same players are already being dismissed as broken goods. Is it time to be concerned about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need their striker necessary? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that he meets their rivals on the weekend: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the Premier League and somehow in their own state of perceived turmoil, like filing a missing person’s report on someone who popped to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Their star finished. The striker waste of money. The coach losing his hair.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football itself, to inflect the way we view it, an entire sport reoriented around talking points and immediate responses, something that happens in the backdrop while we scroll through our phones, incapable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and further hot takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit at present. However, we're all losing a part of the experience here.