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Picture the following: a happy Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, place it with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, appearing like he just missed a sitter. Do not bother locating a real picture of that miss; context is the enemy. Now, add some goal stats in a big, comical font. Don't forget some emoticons. Post the image across all platforms.

Will you mention that Højlund's tally includes strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko does not compete in Europe? Certainly not. Nor would you note that four of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and generates many more scoring opportunities. You manage online for a major brand, pure engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

So the wheel of content spins. Your next task is to sift through a lengthy interview featuring Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "strange". Just before, where Schmeichel qualifies his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. No one wants that. Just make sure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired in the headline. The audience will be furious.

The Season of Promise and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has long been one of my preferred times to watch football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are still fresh, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the season ahead are staking their claims. The summer market is closed. No one is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. All teams 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 read about football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league right now? Please an answer immediately.

Sesko as The Prime Example

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to delay final conclusions, allowing layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to develop. And the imperative to produce permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, context-free criticisms and pointless comparisons, a square that can not truly be circled.

I do not propose to provide a substantive analysis of Sesko's stint at United to date. The guy has been in the lineup four times in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and had a grand total of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? And do I propose to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts argue thrillingly on a popular show over whether he needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this year (Neville), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I enjoyed watching Sesko at his former club: a big, screeching racing car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: given the license to attack but also the leeway to fail. Partly this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most pitiless gap between the patience and space he requires, and the time and air he is going to get.

We saw a case of this during the national team pause, when a widely shared infographic handily stated that the player had been judged – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the press are not the only ones in this. Club channels, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of fake followers: everybody with skin in the game is now basically operating along the identical rules, an ecosystem deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Psychological Toll

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? Separate from the essential weirdness of being a player in the middle of this, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that every single thing about them is now basically material, commodity, public property to be repackaged and exchanged.

And yes, in part this is because United are United, the corpse that continues to feed the narrative, a big club that must constantly be producing the big feelings. But also, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of opinion most clearly and harshly observed at this season, about a month after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been desiring footballers, praising them, salivating over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, a lot of those same players are now being disdained as broken goods. Is it time to worry about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker necessary? What was the point of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that he meets Liverpool on Sunday: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the league and yet in their own situation of feverish crisis, like submitting a missing person’s report on a person who popped to the store 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah finished. Alexander Isak waste of money. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has started to replace football the actual game, to influence the way we watch it, an entire sport repivoted around talking points and immediate responses, an activity that happens in the backdrop while we browse through our phones, unable to disconnect from the constant flow of takes and more takes. Perhaps Sesko bearing the brunt right now. But in a way, everyone is sacrificing a part of the experience here.