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Imagine the following: a happy the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Now, juxtapose it with a dejected the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he's missed an open goal. Don't worry locating an actual photo of that miss; context is the enemy. Now, add statistics in a large, comical font. Don't forget some emoticons. Share it everywhere.

Would you point out that Højlund's tally features scores in the Champions League while Sesko does not compete in continental tournaments? Certainly not. And would you note that four of Højlund's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is much stronger to Slovenia and creates many more chances. You manage social media for a major brand, raw interaction is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

So the cycle of online material turns. Your next task is to scan a 44-minute podcast with Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "weird". Just before, where Schmeichel prefaces his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. No one wants that. Simply make sure "weird" and "Sesko" appear together in the headline. People will be outraged.

This Time of Promise and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my favourite times to watch football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, squads and strategies 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 mentioning the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are still in the game. Right now, all is possibility.

However, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. Because although no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is resurgent. The German talent has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league at this moment? We need an answer now.

Sesko as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to delay final conclusions, allowing technical development and tactical sophistication to develop. And the imperative to generate instant definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, out-of-context condemnations and meaningless contrasts, a square that can not truly be solved.

I do not propose to offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's time at Manchester United so far. He has been in the lineup on four occasions in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and had a grand total of 116 touches. What precisely are we analysing? Nor do I propose to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits argue passionately on a podcast over whether he needs 10 goals to be a success this season (one pundit), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching him at his former club: a big, fast sports car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: given the freedom 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 roughly the duration it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most ruthless gap between the patience and space he requires, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

We saw a case of this during the national team pause, when a widely shared infographic handily informed us that the player had been deemed – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a survey of 20 agents. And of course, the press are by no means alone in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially aligned along the same principles, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to ourselves? Do we realize, on any level, what this endless sluice of irritation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of being a player in the center of this, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about players is now essentially content, product, public property to be repackaged and traded.

Indeed, in part this is because United are United, the corpse that continues to feed the narrative, a major institution that must always be generating the big feelings. However, partly this is a temporary malaise, a swing of judgment most clearly and harshly glimpsed at this season, about a month after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been desiring footballers, eulogising them, drooling over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are already being dismissed as broken goods. Is it time to worry about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need their striker wise? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that Sesko meets their rivals on Sunday: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at home in the league and yet in their own situation of feverish crisis, like filing a missing person’s report on someone who popped to the store half an hour ago. Too open. Their star finished. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. Arne Slot bald.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped 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 reaction, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we browse through our devices, incapable to disconnect from the saline drip of takes and further hot takes. Perhaps Sesko taking the hit right now. However, everyone is sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.