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Picture the following: a happy the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Next, juxtapose it with a dejected the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he's missed a sitter. Don't worry finding a real picture of him missing; context is the enemy. Now, add some goal stats in a big, silly font. Don't forget the emojis. Share it across all platforms.

Would you mention that Højlund's goal count features scores in the premier European competition while his counterpart does not compete in Europe? Certainly not. And would you note that four of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is much stronger to Slovenia and generates far more chances. If you manage online for a large outlet, raw interaction is your livelihood, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

So the cycle of online material spins. Your next task is to sift through a lengthy podcast featuring Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "strange". Just before, where Schmeichel qualifies his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. No one needs that. Just make sure "strange" and "Sesko" appear together in the headline. People will be outraged.

The Season of Promise and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my preferred periods to watch football. Leaves fall, winds shift, the teams and tactics are still fresh, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the coming months are planting their flags. The transfer window is shut. Nobody is mentioning the quadruple yet. Everyone are still in the game. Right now, all is possibility.

Yet, for similar reasons, this period has also been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. For while nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? Please an answer immediately.

The Player as The Prime Example

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player caught between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The need to withhold definitive judgment, allowing technical development and strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to produce instant definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, context-free criticisms and pointless comparisons, a square that can never truly be circled.

It is not my aim to provide a substantive evaluation of Sesko's stint at United to date. The guy has been in the lineup on four occasions in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and taken a mere of 116 touches. What precisely are we evaluating? And will I attempt to duplicate the pundits' notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits duel thrillingly on a popular show over whether he needs 10 goals to be a success this year (one pundit), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I loved watching Sesko at Leipzig: a powerful, screeching racing car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: given the license to attack but also the leeway to miss. Partly this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most pitiless gap between the time and air he requires, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

There was a case of this over the national team pause, when a widely shared infographic conveniently informed us that the player had been deemed – decisively – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a survey of football representatives. Naturally, the media are not alone in such behavior. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: all parties with skin in the game is now basically operating along the same principles, an environment deliberately nosed towards provocation.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to us? Are we aware, on any level, what this endless sluice of irritation is doing to our minds? Separate from the essential weirdness of being a player in the center of it all, knowing on some surreal chain-reaction level that every single thing about players is now basically material, commodity, public property to be repackaged and exchanged.

Indeed, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that keeps nourishing the cycle, a major institution that must always be producing the strong emotions. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of opinion most visibly and harshly glimpsed at this time of year, about a month after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been desiring footballers, praising them, salivating over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, a lot of those same players are now being disdained as failures. Should we start to worry about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need their striker wise? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that he faces their rivals on Sunday: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at home in the Premier League and somehow in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like submitting a a report on a person who popped to the store half an hour ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah finished. The striker waste of money. Arne Slot bald.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football itself, to influence the way we view it, an whole competition reoriented around talking points and reaction, an activity that happens in the background while we scroll through our devices, unable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. Perhaps this player taking the hit at present. But in a way, everyone is sacrificing something in this process.