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Picture the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Next, juxtapose it with a dejected the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he's missed an open goal. Do not bother finding a real picture of that miss; background information is your adversary. Now, include statistics in a big, comical font. Remember the emojis. Post it across all platforms.

Will you point out that Højlund's goal count includes strikes in the Champions League while his counterpart isn't playing in Europe? Certainly not. Nor would you note that four 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. If you manage online for a major brand, pure interaction is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

So the wheel of online material turns. Your next task is to sift through a lengthy podcast with the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "strange". Just before, where he qualifies his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. Nobody wants that. Just make sure "weird" and "the player" are paired in the headline. People will be outraged.

The Season of Promise and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has long been one of my preferred times to watch football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, squads and strategies are still fresh, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the coming months are staking their claims. The summer market is shut. No one is talking about the quadruple yet. Everyone are in contention. Right now, 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 nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league right now? Please an answer immediately.

The Player as The Prime Example

In many ways, Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player caught between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to delay final conclusions, to let technical development and strategic understanding to mature. And the imperative to produce instant verdicts, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, out-of-context condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a puzzle that can never truly be circled.

I do not propose to offer a in-depth analysis of Sesko's time at United so far. The guy has been in the lineup on four occasions in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and had a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we evaluating? And do I propose to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits argue thrillingly on a popular show over whether he needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this season (Neville), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I loved watching him at his former club: a big, fast racing car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: afforded the freedom to rampage but also the freedom to fail. And in part this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in about the time it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most ruthless gap between the patience and space he needs, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

We saw an example of this during the international break, when a viral chart conveniently stated that Sesko had been judged – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a survey of 20 agents. And of course, the media are by no means the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with skin in the game is now basically operating along the identical rules, an ecosystem explicitly geared for controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to ourselves? Do we realize, on some level, what this endless sluice of irritation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of playing in the middle of this, knowing on some surreal butterfly-effect level that every single thing about them is now basically content, commodity, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

Indeed, in part this is because United are United, the entity that continues to feed the cycle, a major institution that must always be producing the strong emotions. However, partly this is a temporary malaise, a swing of judgment most visibly and harshly observed at this season, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been desiring players, praising them, drooling over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are now being disdained as broken goods. Is it time to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that Sesko meets Liverpool on Sunday: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at home in the league and somehow in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like filing a missing person’s report on someone who popped to the shops 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah past his prime. The striker waste of money. Arne Slot bald.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has started to replace football the actual game, to influence the way we view it, an entire sport reoriented around talking points and reaction, an activity that happens in the backdrop while we browse through our devices, incapable to disconnect from the constant flow of opinions and further hot takes. Perhaps Sesko bearing the brunt right now. But in a way, we're all losing something here.