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Picture the following: a happy Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, place that with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he's missed a sitter. Don't bother finding a real picture of that miss; context is the enemy. Then, include statistics in a large, comical font. Remember the emojis. Post it everywhere.

Would you point out that Højlund's tally features strikes in the Champions League while his counterpart does not compete in continental tournaments? Certainly not. And will you highlight that several of the Dane's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that his national team is much stronger to Slovenia and creates far more chances. If you manage social media for a large outlet, raw interaction is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the cycle of online material spins. The next job is to scan a 44-minute interview with Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". Just before, where he prefaces his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. No one wants that. Simply make sure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired in the headline. The audience will be furious.

This Time of Potential and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has long been one of my preferred times to watch football. Leaves fall, winds shift, the teams and tactics are still fresh, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the coming months are planting their flags. The transfer window is closed. No one is talking about the quadruple yet. Everyone are in contention. Right now, anything is possible.

However, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league right now? Please an answer immediately.

The Player as Patient Zero

In many ways, Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to withhold final conclusions, allowing technical development and strategic understanding to develop. And the imperative to produce instant definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of takes and memes, out-of-context criticisms and meaningless comparisons, a square that can never truly be solved.

I do not propose to offer a substantive evaluation of Sesko's time at Manchester United to date. He has been in the lineup on four occasions in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and taken a grand total of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? And do I propose to duplicate the pundits' notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits argue thrillingly on a podcast over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this season (one pundit), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at Leipzig: a big, fast racing car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: given the freedom to rampage but also the leeway to fail. And in part this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: 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 patience and space he needs, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

We saw an example of this over the national team pause, when a viral chart handily stated that Sesko had been judged – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of football representatives. Naturally, the media are by no means the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: all parties with skin in the game is now essentially operating along the identical rules, an ecosystem explicitly geared for provocation.

The Psychological Toll

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

Indeed, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that continues to feed the narrative, a big club that must constantly be generating the big feelings. But also, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of judgment most clearly and harshly observed at this season, about a month after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been desiring players, praising them, salivating over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, a lot of those same players are already being dismissed as broken goods. Should we start to worry about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker necessary? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting 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 state of perceived turmoil, like filing a missing person’s report on a person who popped to the store half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah finished. Alexander Isak 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 the actual game, to inflect the way we watch it, an entire sport reoriented around talking points and immediate responses, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we scroll through our devices, incapable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and further hot takes. Perhaps Sesko bearing the brunt at present. However, everyone is losing something in this process.