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Picture the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Now, juxtapose it with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he just missed an open goal. Don't worry finding a real picture of that miss; context is the enemy. Now, include some goal stats in a large, silly font. Don't forget some emoticons. Post the image across all platforms.

Will you mention that Højlund's goal count features scores in the Champions League while his counterpart isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. And will you highlight that several of Højlund's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Slovenia and creates far more scoring opportunities. If you run social media for a large outlet, pure interaction is what pays the bills, United are the biggest draw, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

So the cycle of content spins. Your next task is to sift through a 44-minute interview featuring Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where Schmeichel qualifies his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. No one wants that. Simply ensure "strange" and "the player" appear together in the title. People will be outraged.

The Season of Potential and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has long been one of my preferred times to watch football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are still fresh, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the season ahead are staking their claims. The summer market is closed. Nobody is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are still in the game. At this precise point, all is possibility.

However, for many of the same reasons, this period has also been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. For while no outcomes are decided, 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 at this moment? Please a decision immediately.

Sesko as Patient Zero

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player caught between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The need to withhold final conclusions, allowing technical development and tactical sophistication to mature. And the demand to produce permanent verdicts, a constant stream of takes and jokes, context-free condemnations and meaningless contrasts, a square that can never truly be solved.

It is not my aim to offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's time at Manchester United to date. The guy has started four times in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and taken a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we analysing? And do I propose to replicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits argue thrillingly on a podcast over whether he needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this season (Neville), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I loved watching Sesko at his former club: a big, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: given the license to rampage but also the leeway to fail. Partly this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most pitiless gulf between the patience and space he needs, and the opportunity he is going to get.

There was an example of this over the international break, when a viral chart conveniently stated that Sesko had been judged – decisively – the worst signing of the recent market by a survey of 20 agents. And of course, the press are by no means alone in this. Club channels, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially operating along the identical rules, an ecosystem deliberately nosed towards provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to ourselves? Are we aware, on any level, what this endless stream of irritation is doing to our minds? Separate from the essential weirdness of playing in the middle of this, knowing on some surreal butterfly-effect level that every single thing about them is now basically material, commodity, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

And yes, in part this is because United are United, the entity that keeps nourishing the narrative, a major institution that must constantly be producing the big feelings. But also, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of opinion most clearly and cruelly observed at this time of year, about a month after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been desiring players, eulogising them, salivating over them. Now, only a handful of games later, many of those very players are already being disdained as failures. Is it time to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need their striker necessary? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that he faces Liverpool on Sunday: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the league and somehow in their own state of perceived turmoil, like submitting a missing person’s report on a person who went to the store half an hour ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah past his prime. Alexander Isak waste of money. The coach bald.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to inflect the way we watch it, an entire sport repivoted around discussion topics and reaction, something that happens in the background while we browse through our devices, unable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. Perhaps Sesko bearing the brunt at present. But in a way, we're all losing something in this process.