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Imagine this: a smiling the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Next, place it with a dejected the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Do not worry locating a real picture of him missing; background information is the enemy. Now, include statistics in a large, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Share the image across all platforms.

Will you point out that Højlund's tally includes strikes in the Champions League while Sesko isn't playing in Europe? Of course not. Nor would you note that several of Højlund's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is far superior to Slovenia and creates far more chances. You run social media for a major brand, raw interaction is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and context is your sworn enemy.

Thus the cycle of content turns. The next job is to scan a lengthy podcast with the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "weird". Just before, where Schmeichel prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. Nobody needs that. Simply make sure "strange" and "the player" appear together in the headline. The audience will be outraged.

The Season of Potential and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my preferred 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 coming months are planting their flags. The transfer window is closed. No one is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are in contention. At this precise point, anything is possible.

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 reborn. The German talent has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league right now? We need a decision immediately.

Sesko as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to withhold final conclusions, to let technical development and strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to produce instant definitive judgment, a constant stream of takes and memes, context-free condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a square that can not truly be circled.

I do not propose to provide a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's time at Manchester United to date. The guy has started four times in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and had a grand total of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? And will I attempt to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts duel passionately 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 (the other).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I loved watching him at Leipzig: a powerful, fast racing car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: given the license to attack but also the freedom to fail. And in part this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: 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 an example of this during the international break, when a widely shared infographic conveniently stated that the player had been deemed – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the press are by no means alone in this. Team social media, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially operating along the identical rules, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to ourselves? Do we realize, on some level, what this infinite sluice of aggravation is doing to our brains? Separate from the essential weirdness of playing in the middle of this, knowing on some surreal butterfly-effect level that every single thing about players is now essentially material, product, public property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that continues to feed the narrative, a big club that must constantly be generating the strong emotions. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of opinion most visibly and harshly glimpsed at this season, about a month after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been desiring footballers, praising them, salivating over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, a lot of those very players are already being dismissed as failures. Is it time to worry about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need their striker wise? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that Sesko meets Liverpool on the weekend: 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 missing person’s report on a person who popped to the store half an hour ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah past his prime. The striker an expensive flop. The coach losing his hair.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football itself, to inflect the way we watch it, an whole competition reoriented around talking points and reaction, something that occurs in the background while we scroll through our phones, unable to detach from the constant flow of takes and further hot takes. It may be Sesko bearing the brunt at present. However, we're all losing something here.