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Picture the following: a smiling the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Next, place it with a dejected Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he's missed an open goal. Don't worry locating a real picture of him missing; background information is the enemy. Now, add statistics in a large, comical font. Remember some emoticons. Post the image across all platforms.

Will you mention that Højlund's goal count features scores in the Champions League while his counterpart isn't playing in Europe? Of course not. And will you note that four of the Dane's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is much stronger to Slovenia and generates many more scoring opportunities. If you run social media for a large outlet, pure engagement is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

So the cycle of content turns. The next job is to sift through a 44-minute podcast featuring the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "strange". Just before, where he prefaces his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. No one wants that. Just ensure "strange" and "Sesko" appear together in the headline. The audience will be outraged.

This Time of Promise and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my favourite periods to observe football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, the teams and tactics are newly formed, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the coming months are planting their flags. The summer market is closed. No one is talking about the quadruple yet. Everyone are in contention. Right now, all is possibility.

However, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn 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. Jack Grealish is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league right now? Please an answer now.

The Player as The Prime Example

In many ways, Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player caught between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The need to delay final conclusions, allowing technical development and strategic understanding to mature. And the demand to generate permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, out-of-context criticisms and meaningless comparisons, a puzzle that can never truly be solved.

I do not propose to provide a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's time at United so far. He has been in the lineup on four occasions in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and had a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we evaluating? Nor will I attempt to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts argue thrillingly on a podcast over whether he needs ten strikes 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 loved watching him at his former club: a powerful, fast sports car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: given the freedom to rampage but also the leeway to fail. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most pitiless gap between the time and air he needs, and the opportunity he is going to get.

We saw a case of this during the international break, when a widely shared chart conveniently stated that Sesko had been deemed – decisively – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a poll of football representatives. And of course, the media are by no means the only ones in this. Club channels, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially aligned along the same principles, an environment deliberately geared for provocation.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this endless sluice of irritation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the middle of this, aware on some surreal chain-reaction level that each aspect about players is now essentially content, commodity, open-source property to be packaged and exchanged.

Indeed, in part this is because United are United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the cycle, a big club that must constantly be producing the big feelings. But also, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of judgment most clearly and cruelly glimpsed at this season, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been coveting players, praising them, drooling over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, a lot of those same players are now being dismissed as broken goods. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker necessary? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that he faces Liverpool on Sunday: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at home in the league and somehow in their own state of feverish crisis, like submitting a a report on a person who popped to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Their star past his prime. The striker waste of money. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has started to replace football the actual game, to influence the way we view it, an whole competition repivoted around talking points and reaction, an activity that occurs in the background while we scroll through our devices, unable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. It may be Sesko bearing the brunt right now. But in a way, everyone is sacrificing a part of the experience here.