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Picture this: a happy the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Now, juxtapose it with a dejected Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, appearing like he just missed a sitter. Do not bother locating a real picture of that miss; background information is the enemy. Now, include statistics in a big, silly font. Remember the emojis. Post the image everywhere.

Will you mention that Højlund's tally includes strikes in the premier European competition while his counterpart does not compete in Europe? Of course not. Nor would you highlight that several of Højlund's goals came against weaker national sides, or that his national team is much stronger to Slovenia and creates many more scoring opportunities. You run social media for a major brand, pure engagement is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

So the cycle of online material turns. The next job is to sift through a lengthy interview with Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "strange". Just before, where Schmeichel prefaces his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. No one wants that. Just make sure "strange" and "Sesko" appear together in the headline. The audience will be furious.

This Time of Potential and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my preferred periods to watch football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, squads and strategies are newly formed, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the season ahead are staking their claims. The summer market is closed. Nobody is talking about the quadruple yet. All teams are in contention. At this precise point, anything is possible.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, this period has long been one of my most disliked times to read about football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league right now? Please an answer immediately.

Sesko as The Prime Example

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The need to delay final conclusions, allowing layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to develop. And the imperative to generate permanent definitive judgment, a constant stream of opinions and jokes, out-of-context condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a square that can never truly be circled.

I do not propose to offer a substantive evaluation of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. The guy 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 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we analysing? Nor will I attempt to replicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts duel passionately on a popular show over whether he needs 10 goals to be a success this season (one pundit), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I loved watching Sesko at Leipzig: a powerful, fast sports car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: afforded the license to rampage but also the leeway to fail. And in part this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most pitiless gulf between the time and air he requires, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

There was a case of this during the national team pause, when a widely shared chart conveniently informed us that the player had been deemed – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a poll of 20 agents. And of course, the media are by no means alone in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with a vested interest is now basically operating along the identical rules, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? Are we aware, on any level, what this endless sluice of irritation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of playing in the center of this, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about players is now essentially content, product, open-source property to be repackaged and traded.

And yes, in part this is because United are United, the entity that keeps nourishing the narrative, a big club that must constantly be producing the big feelings. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a swing of judgment most visibly and harshly glimpsed at this time of year, about a month after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been coveting players, praising them, salivating over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are already being dismissed as broken goods. Is it time to worry about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker necessary? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that Sesko faces their rivals on Sunday: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at home in the league and somehow in their own situation of feverish crisis, like filing a a report on someone who went to the store half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Their star past his prime. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has started to replace football itself, to influence the way we watch it, an whole competition repivoted around talking points and reaction, an activity that happens in the background while we scroll through our devices, unable to disconnect from the constant flow of opinions and more takes. It may be this player taking the hit right now. However, everyone is losing a part of the experience in this process.