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Imagine this: a smiling Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, place that with a dejected Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Do not bother locating a real picture of him missing; context is the enemy. Then, include statistics in a large, comical font. Don't forget some emoticons. Share the image across all platforms.

Will you point out that Højlund's tally includes strikes in the premier European competition while his counterpart isn't playing in Europe? Certainly not. And would you note that four of the Dane's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is far superior to Slovenia and generates many more chances. You manage online for a large outlet, pure engagement is your livelihood, United are the biggest draw, and context is the thing to avoid.

So the cycle of online material turns. Your next task is to scan a 44-minute interview with Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "strange". Just before, where he qualifies his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. No one needs that. Just ensure "strange" and "the player" appear together in the title. The audience will be outraged.

This Time of Potential and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has long been one of my favourite times to observe football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are still fresh, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the coming months are planting their flags. The summer market is closed. No one is talking about the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are in contention. At this precise point, anything is possible.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my least favourite times to read about football. For while nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league at this moment? Please an answer now.

The Player as Patient Zero

In many ways, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The need to withhold definitive judgment, allowing layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to develop. And the imperative to produce instant definitive judgment, a constant stream of opinions and jokes, context-free condemnations and meaningless contrasts, a puzzle that can never truly be solved.

It is not my aim to provide a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's time at Manchester United to date. He has been in the lineup four times in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and had a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we analysing? And will I attempt to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel passionately on a podcast over whether he needs 10 goals to be a success this year (one pundit), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at Leipzig: a big, fast racing car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: given the freedom to rampage 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 "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most ruthless gulf between the time and air he needs, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

We saw an example of this during the international break, 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 poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the press are by no means the only ones in such behavior. Club channels, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of fake followers: everybody with skin in the game is now basically operating along the identical rules, an ecosystem deliberately nosed towards provocation.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? Do we realize, on any level, what this infinite stream of irritation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of playing in the middle of this, knowing on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that every single thing about players is now essentially content, product, public property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, in part this is because United are United, the corpse that continues to feed the cycle, a big club that must always be producing the big feelings. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of judgment most clearly and cruelly observed at this season, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been desiring players, praising them, drooling over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are already being dismissed as broken goods. Should we start to worry about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the point of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that Sesko faces their rivals on Sunday: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at home in the Premier League and somehow in their own state of feverish crisis, like submitting a a report on someone who went to the store 30 minutes ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah finished. Alexander Isak waste of money. The coach losing his hair.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to inflect the way we watch it, an whole competition repivoted around talking points and immediate responses, something that occurs in the background while we browse through our phones, incapable to detach from the saline drip of takes and further hot takes. Perhaps Sesko bearing the brunt at present. However, everyone is losing something here.