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Picture the following: a happy the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Next, place it with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed a sitter. Do not worry finding a real picture of him missing; context is your adversary. Now, add statistics in a big, comical font. Don't forget some emoticons. Share the image everywhere.

Will you mention that Højlund's goal count includes scores in the premier European competition while his counterpart isn't playing in Europe? Of course not. Nor would you note that several of Højlund's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and creates far more scoring opportunities. If you manage online for a large outlet, pure interaction is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the prime target, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

So the cycle of online material turns. Your next task is to scan a lengthy podcast with the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where Schmeichel qualifies his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. Nobody needs that. Just make sure "strange" and "Sesko" appear together in the title. The audience will be furious.

This Time of Potential and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my preferred periods to observe football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are still fresh, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the coming months are staking their claims. The summer market is shut. Nobody is talking about the quadruple yet. Everyone are in contention. Right now, anything is possible.

However, for many of the same reasons, this period has long been one of my least favourite times to read about football. For while nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is resurgent. The German talent has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league right now? Please an answer now.

Sesko as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player caught between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to withhold final conclusions, allowing technical development and strategic understanding to develop. And the imperative to produce instant definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, context-free criticisms and meaningless contrasts, a puzzle that can never truly be circled.

It is not my aim to offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's stint at United to date. The guy has started on four occasions in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and had a grand total of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? Nor will I attempt to replicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts argue thrillingly on a popular show over whether he needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this year (one pundit), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I enjoyed watching Sesko at his former club: a big, screeching racing car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: given the license to rampage but also the leeway to miss. 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 roughly the duration it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most pitiless gulf between the patience and space he needs, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

We saw a case of this during the international break, when a viral infographic handily stated that Sesko had been deemed – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the media are not the only ones in this. 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 Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to us? Are we aware, on any level, what this endless sluice of aggravation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of playing in the center of it all, aware on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that each aspect about them is now basically content, product, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

And yes, partly 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. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, a swing of opinion most clearly and harshly observed at this season, about a month after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been coveting players, praising them, drooling over them. Now, just a few weeks in, many of those same players are already being disdained 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?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that Sesko meets Liverpool on Sunday: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the league and somehow in their own state of perceived turmoil, like filing a a report on someone who popped to the shops 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah finished. The striker an expensive flop. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has started to replace football itself, to inflect the way we view it, an entire sport repivoted around discussion topics and reaction, something that happens in the background while we browse through our devices, incapable to detach from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. Perhaps this player bearing the brunt right now. However, everyone is losing a part of the experience in this process.