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Imagine this: a smiling the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Next, juxtapose that with a dejected the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, appearing like he just missed an open goal. Do not worry locating a real picture of him missing; background information is the enemy. Then, include some goal stats in a big, silly font. Don't forget some emoticons. Share it across all platforms.

Would you point out that Højlund's tally includes strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in continental tournaments? Of course not. And will you note that four of the Dane's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is much stronger to Slovenia and generates many more scoring opportunities. If you run social media for a major brand, pure interaction is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

So the wheel of online material turns. The next job is to sift through a 44-minute podcast with Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. Nobody wants that. Just make sure "strange" and "the player" appear together in the headline. The audience will be furious.

This Time of Promise and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has long been one of my favourite times to observe football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are newly formed, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the season ahead 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, anything is possible.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. For while no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league at this moment? Please a decision now.

Sesko as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player caught between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to delay definitive judgment, to let layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to mature. And the demand to generate instant definitive judgment, a constant stream of takes and memes, context-free criticisms and meaningless comparisons, a puzzle that can not truly be solved.

I do not propose to offer a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. The guy has been in the lineup on four occasions in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and taken 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 seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel thrillingly on a popular show over whether he needs 10 goals to be a success this year (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I loved watching Sesko at Leipzig: a big, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: afforded the license to rampage but also the freedom to miss. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in about the time it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most pitiless gap between the time and air he requires, and the opportunity he is going to get.

We saw an example of this during the national team pause, when a viral infographic conveniently informed us that the player had been judged – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a survey of football representatives. And of course, the media are not alone in such behavior. Club channels, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of fake followers: all parties with a vested interest is now basically operating along the same principles, an ecosystem explicitly geared for provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to ourselves? Are we aware, on any level, what this endless sluice of irritation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of playing in the center of it all, knowing on some surreal butterfly-effect level that every single thing about players is now basically material, product, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

And yes, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the cycle, a major institution that must always be generating the strong emotions. However, in part this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of opinion most visibly and harshly observed at this time of year, about a month after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been desiring players, praising them, salivating over them. Now, only a handful of games later, a lot of those very players are already being disdained as broken goods. Should we start to worry about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need their striker wise? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that Sesko meets Liverpool on the weekend: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the league and somehow in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like submitting a missing person’s report on someone who popped to the store half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Their star finished. Alexander Isak waste of money. The coach 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 view it, an entire sport repivoted around talking points and immediate responses, an activity that occurs in the background while we browse through our devices, unable to detach from the constant flow of takes and further hot takes. It may be this player bearing the brunt at present. However, everyone is sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.