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Picture the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Now, juxtapose that with a dejected Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he just missed an open goal. Do not worry locating an actual photo of that miss; background information is the enemy. Now, add some goal stats in a large, silly font. Remember the emojis. Share it across all platforms.

Would you point out that Højlund's tally includes scores in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in Europe? Of course not. Nor will you highlight that four of Højlund's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that Denmark is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and generates many more chances. If you manage online for a large outlet, pure interaction is your livelihood, Manchester United are the prime target, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

Thus the cycle of content spins. The next job is to sift through a 44-minute interview with Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "weird". Just before, where he qualifies his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. Nobody needs that. Simply ensure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. The audience will be furious.

The Season of Promise and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my preferred times to observe football. Leaves fall, winds shift, the teams and tactics are newly formed, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the season ahead are planting their flags. The summer market is closed. Nobody is talking about the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are still in the game. At this precise point, all is possibility.

However, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my most disliked times to read about football. Because although no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger 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, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The need to delay definitive judgment, allowing technical development and tactical sophistication to develop. And the imperative to produce permanent definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, context-free condemnations and meaningless contrasts, a puzzle that can never truly be circled.

It is not my aim to offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's stint at United to date. The guy has been in the lineup four times in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and had a grand total of 116 touches. What precisely are we evaluating? And will I attempt to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits argue thrillingly on a popular show over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this year (one pundit), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching him at Leipzig: a powerful, screeching sports car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: afforded the freedom to attack but also the freedom to miss. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in roughly the duration it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most pitiless gap between the time and air he requires, and the time and air he is going to get.

We saw an example of this over the international break, when a widely shared infographic handily stated that the player had been deemed – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a survey of 20 agents. Naturally, the media are not the only ones in this. Club channels, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: all parties with a vested interest is now basically operating along the same principles, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards provocation.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to ourselves? Do we realize, on any level, what this endless stream of irritation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of playing in the middle of it all, knowing on some surreal butterfly-effect level that each aspect about them is now basically material, product, public property to be packaged and exchanged.

Indeed, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the cycle, a major institution that must constantly be producing the strong emotions. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, a swing of opinion most clearly and harshly glimpsed at this season, roughly four weeks 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 already being dismissed as broken goods. Is it time to be concerned about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that he faces their rivals on Sunday: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the league and yet in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like filing a missing person’s report on a person who popped to the shops 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah finished. The striker an expensive flop. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football itself, to influence the way we watch it, an whole competition repivoted around talking points and immediate responses, an activity that happens in the background while we scroll through our phones, unable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and further hot takes. Perhaps Sesko bearing the brunt at present. But in a way, everyone is losing a part of the experience here.