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Imagine this: a smiling the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Next, juxtapose it with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed a sitter. Do not bother finding a real picture of that miss; context is your adversary. Then, add some goal stats in a big, comical font. Remember the emojis. Share it everywhere.

Would you point out that Højlund's goal count features strikes in the Champions League while Sesko isn't playing in Europe? Of course not. And would you note that several of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Slovenia and generates far more scoring opportunities. You manage social media for a large outlet, raw engagement is what pays the bills, United are the biggest draw, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

So the wheel of online material turns. Your next task is to scan a lengthy interview featuring Peter Schmeichel 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"... well, remove that part. No one needs that. Simply make sure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired in the headline. The audience will be outraged.

The Season of Promise and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my preferred times to observe football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, the teams and tactics are still fresh, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the season ahead are planting their flags. The summer market is shut. No one is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are in contention. Right now, all is possibility.

However, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. Because although no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league right now? We need a decision now.

Sesko as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player caught between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to withhold final conclusions, to let technical development and tactical sophistication to mature. And the imperative to produce instant definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of takes and memes, context-free criticisms and meaningless contrasts, a square that can never truly be circled.

It is not my aim to offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's time at Manchester United so far. He has started four times in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and had a grand total of 116 touches. What precisely are we evaluating? Nor do I propose to duplicate the pundits' notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits argue thrillingly on a popular show over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be a success this season (one pundit), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I loved watching Sesko at Leipzig: a powerful, screeching sports car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: afforded the freedom to attack but also the freedom to miss. And in part 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 roughly the duration it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most ruthless gap between the patience and space he requires, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

There was a case of this over the national team pause, when a widely shared chart conveniently informed us that the player had been deemed – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a poll of 20 agents. And of course, the media are not the only ones in this. Club channels, influencers, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: everybody with skin in the game is now basically operating along the identical rules, an ecosystem explicitly geared for provocation.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to us? Are we aware, on any level, what this infinite sluice of aggravation is doing to our brains? Separate from the essential weirdness of playing in the middle of it all, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about players is now basically content, product, public property to be repackaged and traded.

And yes, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a major institution that must constantly be producing the strong emotions. However, partly this is a temporary malaise, a swing of judgment most clearly and cruelly observed at this season, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been coveting players, eulogising them, drooling over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are already being dismissed as broken goods. Is it time to be concerned 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 meets Liverpool on the weekend: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at home in the league and yet in their own state of feverish crisis, like submitting a missing person’s report on a person who went to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah past his prime. The striker waste of money. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has started to replace football itself, to influence the way we watch it, an whole competition repivoted around discussion topics and immediate responses, an activity that occurs in the background while we scroll through our devices, incapable to detach from the saline drip of takes and more takes. It may be Sesko bearing the brunt right now. But in a way, everyone is losing something here.