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Picture this: a smiling Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Now, place it with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, appearing like he's missed a sitter. Don't bother finding a real picture of him missing; background information is your adversary. Then, add statistics in a big, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Post it across all platforms.

Would you point out that Højlund's tally includes strikes in the premier European competition while his counterpart isn't playing in Europe? Certainly not. Nor would you note that four of Højlund's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is much stronger to Slovenia and creates many more chances. If you manage online for a large outlet, pure engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

So the wheel of online material turns. The next job is to sift through a 44-minute interview featuring the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". Just before, where he prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. Nobody wants that. Simply ensure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired in the headline. People will be furious.

This Time of Potential and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has long been one of my favourite times to watch football. Leaves fall, winds shift, the teams and tactics are still fresh, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the season ahead are planting their flags. The transfer window is shut. Nobody is talking about the multiple trophies yet. Everyone 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 no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is reborn. The German talent has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? We need a decision now.

Sesko as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to withhold definitive judgment, allowing layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to develop. And the imperative to generate instant verdicts, a conveyor belt of opinions and memes, out-of-context criticisms and pointless comparisons, a puzzle that can not truly be solved.

I do not propose to provide a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's time at Manchester United to date. He has started four times in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and had a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we analysing? And will I attempt to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts duel thrillingly on a podcast over whether he needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this season (one pundit), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I loved watching Sesko at Leipzig: a big, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: afforded the license to attack but also the leeway to fail. 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 roughly the duration it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most pitiless gulf between the patience and space he needs, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

There was a case of this during the national team pause, when a widely shared infographic handily stated that Sesko had been judged – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of football representatives. And of course, the press are by no means the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: all parties with skin in the game is now essentially aligned along the same principles, an environment deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? Do we realize, on some level, what this infinite stream of aggravation is doing to our brains? Separate from the inherent strangeness of playing in the middle of it all, knowing on some surreal butterfly-effect level that every single thing about players is now basically material, product, open-source property to be repackaged and traded.

And yes, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a big club that must always be generating the strong emotions. However, in part this is a temporary malaise, a swing of judgment most visibly and harshly observed at this time of year, about a month after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been coveting footballers, eulogising them, salivating over them. Now, only a handful of games later, a lot of those very players are now being dismissed as broken goods. Is it time to worry about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that Sesko meets Liverpool on Sunday: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at home in the league and yet in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like submitting a missing person’s report on someone who went to the store half an hour ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah past his prime. The striker waste of money. The coach bald.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has started to replace football itself, to inflect the way we view it, an whole competition reoriented around discussion topics and immediate responses, something that occurs in the backdrop while we browse through our phones, unable to disconnect from the constant flow of opinions and more takes. Perhaps Sesko taking the hit at present. But in a way, everyone is losing a part of the experience in this process.