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Picture this: a happy the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Next, juxtapose it with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he just missed a sitter. Don't worry finding an actual photo of him missing; context is your adversary. Now, include some goal stats in a big, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Post it everywhere.

Will you point out that Højlund's goal count features strikes in the premier European competition while his counterpart does not compete in Europe? Of course not. Nor will you note that several of Højlund's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Slovenia and creates many more chances. If you run online for a major brand, pure engagement is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the prime target, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

So the wheel of online material turns. The next job is to sift through a lengthy podcast featuring Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "weird". Just before, where Schmeichel qualifies his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. Nobody needs that. Just make sure "strange" and "Sesko" are paired in the headline. The audience will be outraged.

The Season of Promise and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has long been one of my favourite periods to observe football. Leaves fall, winds shift, squads and strategies are newly formed, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the coming months are staking their claims. The transfer window is closed. Nobody is mentioning the quadruple yet. Everyone are still in the game. At this precise point, all is possibility.

However, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. For while nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is reborn. The German talent has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league right now? Please a decision now.

Sesko as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player caught between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to delay definitive judgment, allowing layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to mature. And the demand to generate permanent definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of opinions and memes, context-free criticisms and pointless comparisons, a square that can not truly be circled.

I do not propose to offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's time at United so far. He has started on four occasions in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and had a grand total of 116 touches. What exactly are we evaluating? Nor will I attempt to duplicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts argue passionately on a popular show over whether he needs ten strikes to be a success this season (Neville), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I loved watching Sesko at Leipzig: a powerful, fast racing car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: afforded the freedom to rampage but also the leeway to miss. And in part 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 load a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most pitiless gulf between the time and air he needs, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

We saw an example of this during the national team pause, when a viral chart conveniently stated that the player had been judged – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the recent market by a poll of football representatives. Naturally, the media are not the only ones in this. Team social media, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: everybody with a vested interest is now essentially 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 stream of irritation is doing to our minds? Separate from the essential weirdness of being a player in the middle of it all, knowing on some surreal chain-reaction level that every single thing about them is now essentially material, product, open-source property to be repackaged and traded.

And yes, in part this is because United are United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a big club that must always be generating the strong emotions. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of opinion most clearly and harshly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been desiring players, eulogising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, many of those very players are now being disdained as failures. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker wise? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that Sesko meets their rivals on Sunday: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the league and yet in their own state of feverish crisis, like submitting a a report on a person who went to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Their star finished. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. The coach losing his hair.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has started to replace football the actual game, to influence the way we view it, an entire sport reoriented around talking points and reaction, something that occurs in the background while we scroll through our devices, incapable to disconnect from the constant flow of takes and more takes. It may be this player taking the hit right now. But in a way, we're all losing something in this process.