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Imagine the following: a happy the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Next, place that with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed a sitter. Do not bother finding an actual photo of that miss; context is your adversary. Then, add statistics in a large, comical font. Don't forget some emoticons. Post the image across all platforms.

Would you point out that Højlund's goal count includes strikes in the Champions League while his counterpart isn't playing in continental tournaments? Of course not. Nor would you note that four of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that his national team is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and creates far more scoring opportunities. You run social media for a large outlet, raw interaction is your livelihood, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and context is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of content turns. The next job is to sift through a lengthy interview featuring the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "weird". Just before, where Schmeichel qualifies his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. Nobody needs that. Simply make sure "weird" and "the player" are paired in the headline. People will be outraged.

The Season of Potential and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has long been one of my preferred times to observe football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are still fresh, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the season ahead are planting their flags. The transfer window is shut. No one is talking about the quadruple yet. All teams are in contention. At this precise point, anything is possible.

However, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my least favourite times to read about football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is reborn. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league right now? We need a decision now.

The Player as The Prime Example

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player caught between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to withhold final conclusions, allowing technical development and strategic understanding to develop. And the imperative to generate permanent definitive judgment, a constant stream of opinions and jokes, context-free condemnations and pointless comparisons, a puzzle that can not truly be solved.

It is not my aim to offer a in-depth analysis of Sesko's time at Manchester United so far. The guy has started four times in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and had a mere of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? And do I propose to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel passionately on a popular show over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this season (one pundit), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at his former club: a powerful, screeching sports car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: given the license to rampage but also the leeway to fail. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in about the time it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most pitiless gulf between the time and air 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 informed us that Sesko had been deemed – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a survey of football representatives. Naturally, the media are not alone in such behavior. Club channels, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of fake followers: everybody with a vested interest is now essentially operating along the same principles, an environment deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to ourselves? Do we realize, on some level, what this endless sluice of irritation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of playing in the center of it all, aware on some surreal chain-reaction level that every single thing about them is now basically material, commodity, public property to be repackaged and exchanged.

Indeed, partly this is because United are United, the entity that continues to feed the cycle, a big club that must constantly be generating the strong emotions. However, in part this is a temporary malaise, a swing of opinion most clearly and harshly glimpsed at this season, about a month after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been coveting footballers, eulogising them, salivating over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are now being disdained as failures. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need their striker necessary? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that Sesko meets their rivals on Sunday: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at home in the Premier League and yet in their own state of feverish crisis, like submitting a missing person’s report on a person who went to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Their star finished. The striker waste of money. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football itself, to inflect the way we view it, an whole competition repivoted around talking points and reaction, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we scroll through our devices, incapable to detach from the constant flow of opinions and further hot takes. It may be this player taking the hit right now. However, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience here.