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Picture this: a smiling the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Now, juxtapose it with a dejected Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, appearing like he just missed a sitter. Don't bother locating a real picture of him missing; background information is your adversary. Then, add some goal stats in a big, silly font. Don't forget the emojis. Share the image everywhere.

Would you mention that Højlund's goal count includes scores in the premier European competition while his counterpart does not compete in continental tournaments? Of course not. Nor will you note that four of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and creates many more scoring opportunities. If you run social media for a major brand, pure engagement is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

So the wheel of online material turns. The next job is to scan a lengthy interview featuring Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "weird". Just before, where Schmeichel prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. No one needs that. Simply ensure "weird" and "the player" are paired in the title. People will be furious.

The Season of Potential and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my favourite periods to watch football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are newly formed, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the coming months are planting their flags. The transfer window 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 many of the same reasons, this period has long been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. Because although no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league right now? We need an answer immediately.

Sesko as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player caught between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to withhold final conclusions, to let technical development and tactical sophistication to develop. And the demand to generate permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, context-free condemnations and pointless comparisons, a puzzle that can not truly be circled.

I do not propose to provide a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's time at Manchester United so far. He has been in the lineup on four occasions in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and taken a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we analysing? And do I propose to replicate the pundits' notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits duel passionately on a popular show over whether he needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this year (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I enjoyed watching him at Leipzig: a big, fast sports car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: given the license to rampage but also the freedom to miss. And in part this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most pitiless gulf between the time and air he needs, and the opportunity he is going to get.

We saw a case of this over the national team pause, when a widely shared infographic conveniently stated that the player had been deemed – decisively – the worst signing of the recent market by a survey of 20 agents. Naturally, the media are not alone in this. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with skin in the game is now basically operating along the same principles, an environment deliberately nosed towards provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to us? Are we aware, on any level, what this endless sluice of aggravation is doing to our brains? Separate from the essential weirdness of playing in the center of this, knowing on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that each aspect about players is now basically material, commodity, open-source property to be repackaged and traded.

Indeed, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that continues to feed the narrative, a big club that must always be generating the strong emotions. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of opinion most visibly and harshly observed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been desiring players, praising them, salivating over them. Now, only a handful of games later, a lot of those very players are now being disdained as failures. Should we start to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that Sesko meets Liverpool on Sunday: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier 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. Their star finished. The striker waste of money. The coach bald.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football itself, to influence the way we view it, an whole competition repivoted around discussion topics and reaction, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we scroll through our devices, unable to detach from the saline drip of takes and further hot takes. Perhaps this player bearing the brunt right now. But in a way, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience here.