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Imagine this: a happy Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Next, place that with a dejected Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, looking as if he's missed an open goal. Do not bother finding a real picture of him missing; background information is the enemy. Now, add statistics in a large, comical font. Remember some emoticons. Share it across all platforms.

Will you mention that Højlund's goal count features strikes in the premier European competition while his counterpart isn't playing in Europe? Certainly not. And will you note that several of Højlund's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Slovenia and creates far more chances. If you run social media for a major brand, pure engagement is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the prime target, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of online material turns. The next job is to sift through a lengthy interview featuring the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where Schmeichel prefaces his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. No one needs that. Just ensure "strange" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. The audience will be furious.

The Season of Potential and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has long been one of my favourite times to watch football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are newly formed, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the season ahead are staking their claims. The summer market is closed. Nobody is mentioning the quadruple yet. Everyone are in contention. Right now, anything is possible.

However, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my most disliked times to read about football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league at this moment? Please an answer now.

The Player as The Prime Example

In many ways, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to withhold final conclusions, to let layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to mature. And the demand to produce instant definitive judgment, a constant stream of opinions and jokes, context-free criticisms and pointless comparisons, a puzzle that can not truly be solved.

I do not propose to provide a substantive analysis of Sesko's time at Manchester United so far. He has started on four occasions in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and had a grand total of 116 touches. What exactly are we evaluating? Nor do I propose to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits argue passionately on a podcast over whether he needs ten strikes to be a success this season (Neville), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I enjoyed watching him at Leipzig: a big, screeching sports car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: afforded the freedom to attack but also the leeway to miss. And in part this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" 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 requires, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

We saw a case of this during the national team pause, when a widely shared infographic conveniently informed us that Sesko had been judged – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a survey of football representatives. Naturally, the media are not the only ones in this. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of fake followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially operating along the same principles, an ecosystem deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to us? Do we realize, on some level, what this endless sluice of irritation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of being a player in the center of it all, knowing on a bizarre chain-reaction level that every single thing about players is now essentially material, product, public property to be repackaged and traded.

Indeed, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that continues to feed the narrative, a big club that must always be generating the big feelings. But also, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of judgment most visibly and cruelly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. All summer long we have been coveting players, praising them, salivating over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, a lot of those very players are already being dismissed as failures. Should we start to be concerned 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 Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at home in the league and somehow in their own situation of feverish crisis, like submitting a a report on a person who popped to the store 30 minutes ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah past his prime. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. The coach bald.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has started to replace football the actual game, to inflect the way we watch it, an whole competition reoriented around discussion topics and reaction, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we browse through our phones, incapable to detach from the saline drip of takes and further hot takes. Perhaps this player bearing the brunt right now. However, everyone is losing something here.