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Imagine this: a happy the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Now, juxtapose that with a dejected the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Don't bother finding a real picture of that miss; context is your adversary. Then, include some goal stats in a large, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Post the image across all platforms.

Would you point out that Højlund's tally includes strikes in the Champions League while Sesko isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. Nor will you highlight that four of the Dane's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and creates many more scoring opportunities. If you run social media for a large outlet, pure interaction is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and context is your sworn enemy.

So the cycle of content spins. The next job is to sift through a 44-minute podcast featuring Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he qualifies his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. No one wants that. Simply ensure "weird" and "the player" appear together in the title. The audience will be outraged.

The Season of Promise and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has long been one of my preferred periods to observe football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are still fresh, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the coming months are staking their claims. The transfer window is shut. Nobody is talking about the quadruple yet. All teams are in contention. Right now, all is possibility.

Yet, for similar reasons, this period has also been one of my least favourite times to read about football. Because although no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. The German talent has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league right now? Please a decision now.

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 definitive judgment, allowing technical development and strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to generate instant definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, out-of-context criticisms and pointless comparisons, a puzzle that can never truly be solved.

I do not propose to offer a in-depth analysis of Sesko's stint at United to date. He has been in the lineup on four occasions in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and taken a grand total of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? And do I propose to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts duel 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 (the other).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I loved watching him at his former club: a powerful, fast racing car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: afforded the freedom to rampage but also the freedom to miss. And in part this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most pitiless gap between the time and air he needs, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

There was a case of this during the national team pause, when a widely shared infographic conveniently stated that Sesko had been judged – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of football representatives. And of course, the press are by no means alone in this. Club channels, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of fake followers: all parties with a vested interest is now basically aligned along the same principles, an environment explicitly geared for controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to ourselves? Do we realize, on any level, what this infinite stream of aggravation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the center of it all, aware on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that every single thing about players is now basically content, commodity, public property to be repackaged and traded.

Indeed, partly this is because United are United, the corpse that continues to feed the cycle, a major institution that must always be producing the big feelings. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of judgment most clearly and harshly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been coveting players, eulogising them, salivating over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, many of those very players are now being dismissed as failures. Is it time to worry about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that Sesko faces their rivals on Sunday: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at home in the Premier League and yet in their own state of feverish crisis, like filing a missing person’s report on someone who went to the store half an hour ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah finished. Alexander Isak waste of money. Arne Slot bald.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to influence the way we watch it, an entire sport reoriented around talking points and reaction, something that occurs in the backdrop while we scroll through our devices, unable to disconnect from the saline drip of takes and further hot takes. It may be Sesko bearing the brunt right now. However, we're all sacrificing something here.