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Imagine this: a happy Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Now, juxtapose it with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed a sitter. Don't worry locating an actual photo of that miss; background information is your adversary. Then, include statistics in a big, silly font. Don't forget some emoticons. Post the image everywhere.

Will you mention that Højlund's goal count includes strikes in the premier European competition while his counterpart isn't playing in Europe? Of course not. And would you highlight that four of Højlund's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and generates far 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 nuance is the thing to avoid.

Thus the cycle of content turns. The next job is to scan a lengthy interview featuring the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". Just before, where he prefaces his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. Nobody wants that. Just make sure "weird" and "the player" are paired in the headline. The audience will be outraged.

The Season of Promise and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my favourite times to watch football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are still fresh, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the season ahead are staking their claims. The summer market is closed. Nobody is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are still in the game. At this precise point, anything is possible.

Yet, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. For while no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league at this moment? We need an answer immediately.

Sesko as Patient Zero

In many ways, Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player caught between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to withhold final conclusions, allowing technical development and strategic understanding to mature. And the imperative to generate instant verdicts, a constant stream of takes and memes, out-of-context criticisms and meaningless contrasts, a puzzle that can not truly be circled.

I do not propose to provide a in-depth analysis of Sesko's stint at Manchester United so far. He has been in the lineup four times in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and taken a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we analysing? And do I propose to duplicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel passionately on a popular show over whether he needs ten strikes to be a success this season (one pundit), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I enjoyed watching him at Leipzig: a big, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: given the license to attack but also the freedom to miss. Partly this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in about the time it takes to load 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 likely to receive.

We saw a case of this over the national team pause, when a viral chart handily stated that the player had been deemed – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the recent market by a survey of football representatives. And of course, the media are by no means the only ones in this. Club channels, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: all parties with skin in the game is now essentially aligned along the identical rules, an ecosystem deliberately geared for controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this endless stream of aggravation is doing to our brains? Separate from the essential weirdness of playing in the middle of it all, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that every single thing about them is now essentially content, product, open-source property to be repackaged and traded.

And yes, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that keeps nourishing the cycle, a major institution that must always be producing the big feelings. But also, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of opinion most visibly and harshly glimpsed at this season, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been coveting footballers, eulogising them, salivating over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, a lot of those same players are already being dismissed as broken goods. Is it time to worry about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need their striker wise? What was the point of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that Sesko meets their rivals on Sunday: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at home in the league and yet in their own situation of feverish crisis, like submitting a missing person’s report on someone who went to the shops 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah finished. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. Arne Slot bald.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football itself, to inflect the way we view it, an whole competition reoriented around talking points and immediate responses, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we scroll through our phones, unable to detach from the saline drip of takes and further hot takes. It may be Sesko bearing the brunt at present. However, everyone is sacrificing something here.