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Imagine this: a smiling the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Now, juxtapose that with a dejected the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, looking as if he just missed a sitter. Do not worry locating a real picture of that miss; background information is the enemy. Then, add statistics in a big, silly font. Don't forget the emojis. Share the image everywhere.

Will you mention that Højlund's tally includes strikes in the Champions League while his counterpart isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. Nor would you highlight that several of the Dane's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and generates many more chances. If you run social media for a major brand, raw interaction is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the prime target, and context is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of online material spins. Your next task is to scan a 44-minute podcast with the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "strange". Just before, where he prefaces his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. No one wants that. Simply make sure "weird" and "the player" appear together in the title. The audience will be outraged.

The Season of Potential and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my favourite times to watch football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are still fresh, 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 quadruple yet. All teams are in contention. At this precise point, all is possibility.

Yet, for similar reasons, this period has long been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. For while no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league at this moment? We need a decision immediately.

Sesko as The Prime Example

In many ways, Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to delay definitive judgment, allowing layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to develop. And the imperative to generate permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, out-of-context condemnations and pointless contrasts, a puzzle that can never truly be solved.

I do not propose to offer a substantive evaluation of Sesko's time at United to date. He has started four times 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 do I propose to replicate 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 podcast over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this season (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (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 pitched perfectly to his abilities: given the license to rampage but also the leeway to miss. Partly this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in roughly the duration it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most ruthless gap between the patience and space he needs, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

We saw a case of this over the national team pause, when a viral chart handily informed us that the player had been deemed – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a survey of 20 agents. And of course, the media are not alone in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: everybody with skin in the game is now basically operating along the same principles, an environment explicitly geared for provocation.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to ourselves? Are we aware, on any level, what this infinite stream of aggravation is doing to our minds? Separate from the essential weirdness of being a player in the center of it all, aware on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that each aspect about players is now basically content, commodity, open-source property to be packaged and exchanged.

And yes, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that continues to feed the cycle, a major institution that must constantly be generating the big feelings. However, partly this is a temporary malaise, a swing of judgment most clearly and harshly observed at this time of year, about a month after the window has closed. All summer long we have been desiring footballers, eulogising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are already being disdained as failures. Should we start to worry about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker wise? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that he faces their rivals on Sunday: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the Premier League and yet in their own state of perceived turmoil, like filing a a report on someone who went to the shops 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah finished. The striker an expensive flop. The coach losing his hair.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to influence the way we watch it, an whole competition repivoted around talking points and reaction, an activity that happens in the background while we scroll through our devices, unable to detach from the saline drip of takes and further hot takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit right now. But in a way, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience here.