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Imagine the following: a happy Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Now, place that with a dejected the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he's missed a sitter. Don't worry finding a real picture of that miss; context is the enemy. Now, add some goal stats in a big, silly font. Don't forget the emojis. Share it across all platforms.

Would you point out that Højlund's tally features strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko does not compete in Europe? Certainly not. And would you highlight that four of Højlund's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and creates many more scoring opportunities. If you manage online for a large outlet, raw engagement is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and context is your sworn enemy.

Thus the cycle of online material turns. The next job is to sift through a lengthy podcast with the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he qualifies his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. Nobody wants that. Simply make sure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. The audience will be outraged.

The Season of Potential and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my favourite times to watch football. Leaves fall, winds shift, the teams and tactics are newly formed, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the season ahead are planting their flags. The summer market is shut. Nobody is talking about the quadruple yet. Everyone are still in the game. Right now, anything is possible.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, this period has also been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is reborn. The German talent has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league right now? We need an answer now.

The Player as Patient Zero

In many ways, Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The need to delay definitive judgment, allowing layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to mature. And the demand to produce instant definitive judgment, a constant stream of opinions and jokes, context-free criticisms and meaningless comparisons, a square that can not truly be solved.

I do not propose to provide a in-depth analysis of Sesko's stint at Manchester United so far. The guy has started on four occasions in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and had a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we evaluating? Nor will I attempt to duplicate the pundits' notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel passionately on a podcast over whether he needs ten strikes to be a success this season (Neville), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Harsh Reality

Despite 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 abilities: afforded the license to rampage but also the freedom to miss. And in part this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in roughly the duration it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most ruthless gap between the time and air he requires, and the time and air he is going to get.

We saw a case of this during the international break, when a viral infographic handily informed us that Sesko had been judged – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a poll of 20 agents. And of course, the press are by no means alone in such behavior. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of fake followers: everybody with a vested interest is now essentially aligned along the same principles, an environment explicitly geared for controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to us? Do we realize, on any level, what this endless sluice of aggravation is doing to our brains? Separate from the essential weirdness of playing in the middle of this, knowing on some surreal butterfly-effect level that each aspect about players is now essentially material, commodity, public property to be repackaged and exchanged.

And yes, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the cycle, a big club that must always be generating the big feelings. However, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of judgment most visibly and cruelly observed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been coveting players, praising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are already being disdained as failures. Is it time to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the point of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that he meets Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the Premier League and yet in their own situation of feverish crisis, like filing a a report on someone who popped to the shops 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah finished. The striker waste of money. Arne Slot bald.

Maybe 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 occurs in the background while we browse through our devices, incapable to disconnect from the constant flow of takes and more takes. It may be this player bearing the brunt at present. However, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience here.