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Imagine this: a smiling the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Next, place it with a dejected Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, appearing like he just missed a sitter. Do not bother finding a real picture of that miss; context is the enemy. Then, add some goal stats in a large, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Post it everywhere.

Will you point out that Højlund's goal count features strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in Europe? Certainly not. Nor will you highlight that four of Højlund's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that Denmark is much stronger to Slovenia and creates far more chances. You run online for a major brand, pure interaction is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

So the wheel of online material turns. Your next task is to sift through a lengthy interview with the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where Schmeichel qualifies his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. Nobody wants that. Just make sure "weird" and "Sesko" appear together in the headline. The audience will be outraged.

This Time of Promise and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my favourite periods to watch football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are still fresh, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the season ahead are staking their claims. The transfer window is closed. Nobody is mentioning the quadruple yet. Everyone are still in the game. At this precise point, anything is possible.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my most disliked times to read about football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? Please an answer now.

The Player as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player caught between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The need to delay final conclusions, allowing layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to mature. And the imperative to produce permanent verdicts, a constant stream of opinions and jokes, out-of-context criticisms and pointless comparisons, a square that can not truly be solved.

I do not propose to offer a substantive evaluation of Sesko's time at Manchester United to date. He 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 touches. What precisely are we evaluating? Nor will I attempt to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts duel thrillingly on a popular show over whether he needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this year (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching him at his former club: a big, screeching racing car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: afforded the license to rampage but also the freedom to miss. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to load a short advertisement, 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 over the national team pause, when a widely shared infographic handily informed us 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 not alone in such behavior. Club channels, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: all parties with a vested interest is now basically operating along the identical rules, an ecosystem explicitly geared for provocation.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? Do we realize, on any level, what this infinite sluice of aggravation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the center of this, knowing on some surreal butterfly-effect level that every single thing about them is now basically material, product, public property to be packaged and exchanged.

Indeed, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the cycle, a major institution that must constantly be generating the big feelings. But also, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of opinion most visibly 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, drooling over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, many of those very players are already being disdained as failures. Is it time to worry about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker necessary? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that he faces their rivals on the weekend: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the league and somehow in their own situation of feverish crisis, like submitting a a report on a person who went to the store 30 minutes ago. Too open. Their star past his prime. The striker waste of money. The coach bald.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football itself, to influence the way we watch it, an whole competition reoriented around discussion topics and immediate responses, something that happens in the backdrop while we browse through our devices, unable to detach from the constant flow of takes and more takes. It may be Sesko bearing the brunt right now. But in a way, we're all losing a part of the experience here.