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Picture the following: a happy Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Next, juxtapose it with a dejected Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he's missed a sitter. Do not worry locating a real picture of that miss; context is your adversary. Now, include some goal stats in a big, comical font. Remember some emoticons. Share the image everywhere.

Would you mention that Højlund's goal count features strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in Europe? Certainly not. And would you highlight that several of Højlund's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is far superior to Slovenia and generates many more scoring opportunities. If you manage social media for a major brand, pure interaction is your livelihood, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

So the wheel of online material spins. Your next task is to scan a 44-minute podcast featuring the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "weird". Just before, where he prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. No one needs that. Just make sure "weird" and "Sesko" appear together in the headline. The audience will be outraged.

The Season of Potential and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my favourite periods to watch football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, squads and strategies are newly formed, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the coming months are planting their flags. The summer market is closed. No one is mentioning the quadruple yet. All teams are in contention. Right now, anything is possible.

However, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. Because although no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league right now? Please a decision immediately.

The Player as The Prime Example

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player caught between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The need to delay definitive judgment, allowing technical development and strategic understanding to mature. And the demand to produce instant definitive judgment, a constant stream of opinions and memes, out-of-context condemnations and pointless contrasts, a puzzle that can never truly be solved.

It is not my aim to offer a substantive evaluation of Sesko's stint at United to date. He has started on four occasions in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and had a grand total of 116 touches. What precisely are we analysing? Nor do I propose to replicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts duel passionately on a podcast over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be a success this year (one pundit), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I loved watching Sesko at his former club: a powerful, screeching racing car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: afforded the license to rampage but also the freedom to fail. Partly this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued 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 opportunity he is likely to receive.

There was an example of this over the national team pause, when a widely shared chart conveniently informed us that the player had been judged – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. And of course, the media are not alone in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: all parties with skin in the game is now basically operating along the same principles, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to ourselves? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite stream of irritation is doing to our brains? Separate from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the center of it all, aware on some surreal chain-reaction level that every single thing about them is now essentially content, commodity, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

And yes, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that keeps nourishing the narrative, a major institution that must always be generating the strong emotions. But also, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of judgment most visibly and harshly glimpsed at this season, about a month after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been coveting players, praising them, salivating over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, many of those very players are already being disdained as failures. Is it time to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres necessary? 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 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and somehow in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like submitting a a report on a person who popped to the store 30 minutes ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah finished. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to influence the way we watch it, an entire sport repivoted around discussion topics and reaction, something that happens in the background while we scroll through our devices, incapable to disconnect from the constant flow of opinions and further hot takes. It may be Sesko bearing the brunt at present. However, everyone is sacrificing a part of the experience here.