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Picture this: a happy Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Now, place it with a dejected Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he just missed a sitter. Do not bother finding an actual photo of him missing; context is your adversary. Then, include some goal stats in a large, silly font. Remember the emojis. Share the image across all platforms.

Would you mention that Højlund's goal count features strikes in the premier European competition while his counterpart isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. Nor will you note that several of Højlund's goals came against weaker national sides, or that his national team is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and generates many more chances. If you run social media for a major brand, raw engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the prime target, and context is your sworn enemy.

So the cycle of content turns. The next job is to sift through a lengthy podcast featuring the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "strange". Just before, where Schmeichel qualifies his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. Nobody needs that. Just make sure "strange" and "the player" appear together in the title. The audience will be furious.

The Season of Promise and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my favourite periods to watch football. Leaves fall, winds shift, the teams and tactics are still fresh, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the coming months are planting their flags. The transfer window is closed. No one is mentioning the quadruple yet. Everyone are in contention. At this precise point, all is possibility.

However, for many of the same reasons, this period has long been one of my most disliked times to read about football. For while nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is resurgent. The German talent has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league right now? We need a decision immediately.

The Player as Patient Zero

In many ways, Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player caught between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The need to delay final conclusions, to let layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to generate instant definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of takes and memes, context-free condemnations and meaningless contrasts, a puzzle that can not truly be solved.

I do not propose to offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. The guy has been in the lineup on four occasions in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and taken a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we evaluating? And do I propose to replicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts argue thrillingly on a podcast over whether he needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this season (one pundit), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching Sesko at his former club: a big, fast racing car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: afforded the freedom to rampage but also the leeway to fail. And in part this is why United feels like the cruellest 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 widest and most pitiless gap between the time and air he requires, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

There was a case of this during the international break, when a widely shared chart handily informed us that the player had been judged – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a survey of 20 agents. Naturally, the press are not alone in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of fake followers: everybody with a vested interest is now essentially aligned along the identical rules, an ecosystem deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? Do we realize, on any level, what this infinite stream of aggravation is doing to our brains? Separate from the essential weirdness of playing in the center of this, knowing on some surreal butterfly-effect level that each aspect about them is now basically content, commodity, public property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, partly this is because United are United, the entity that keeps nourishing the cycle, a major institution that must constantly be producing the big feelings. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, a swing of opinion most visibly and harshly glimpsed at this season, about a month after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been coveting footballers, praising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, many of those very players are now being dismissed as broken goods. Should we start to worry about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker wise? What was the point of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that Sesko faces Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at home in the league and yet in their own state of perceived turmoil, like filing a missing person’s report on a person who went to the shops 30 minutes 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 storyline of football has begun to supplant football itself, to influence the way we watch it, an whole competition reoriented around talking points and reaction, something that happens in the backdrop while we browse through our devices, unable to detach from the saline drip of opinions and further hot takes. Perhaps this player bearing the brunt right now. But in a way, everyone is sacrificing something in this process.