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Imagine this: a happy the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Now, juxtapose it with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, looking as if he's missed an open goal. Do not bother finding an actual photo of him missing; background information is the enemy. Then, include statistics in a large, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Post it everywhere.

Will you mention that Højlund's tally features strikes in the Champions League while his counterpart does not compete in continental tournaments? Certainly not. Nor would you note that several of the Dane's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and generates far more chances. You manage online for a large outlet, pure engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the prime target, and context is your sworn enemy.

So the cycle of content spins. The next job is to sift through a 44-minute interview featuring the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "weird". Just before, where Schmeichel qualifies his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. No one wants that. Simply ensure "weird" and "the player" are paired in the title. The audience will be outraged.

This Time of Promise and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has long been one of my favourite times to watch football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, squads and strategies are newly formed, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the season ahead are staking their claims. The summer market is shut. Nobody is mentioning the quadruple yet. Everyone are in contention. At this precise point, all is possibility.

Yet, for similar reasons, this period has also been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? We need an answer immediately.

The Player as The Prime Example

In many ways, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player caught between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to withhold final conclusions, allowing layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to develop. And the imperative to generate instant verdicts, a constant stream of opinions and memes, out-of-context condemnations and pointless comparisons, a square that can never truly be solved.

It is not my aim to provide a substantive analysis of Sesko's time at Manchester United to date. He has started four times in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and taken a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we evaluating? Nor will I attempt to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits duel passionately on a podcast over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be a success this year (Neville), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I loved watching him at his former club: a powerful, screeching racing car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: afforded the freedom to rampage but also the leeway to miss. Partly this is why 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 pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most pitiless gulf between the time and air he requires, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

There was an example of this over the national team pause, when a viral infographic conveniently informed us that Sesko had been judged – decisively – the worst signing of the recent market by a poll of football representatives. And of course, the media are not the only ones in this. Club channels, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of fake followers: everybody with a vested interest is now basically aligned along the same principles, an environment explicitly nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to ourselves? Do we realize, on any level, what this endless sluice of aggravation is doing to our minds? 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 players is now basically content, product, public property to be packaged and traded.

And yes, in part this is because United are United, the entity that keeps nourishing the narrative, a big club that must always be generating the big feelings. However, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of judgment most clearly and cruelly glimpsed at this season, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. Throughout the summer 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 worry about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need their striker necessary? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that he meets their rivals on the weekend: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at home in the Premier League and yet in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like submitting a missing person’s report on someone who popped to the shops 30 minutes ago. Too open. Their star finished. Alexander Isak waste of money. The coach losing his hair.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to inflect the way we watch it, an entire sport repivoted around discussion topics and reaction, something that occurs in the background while we scroll through our phones, incapable to disconnect from the constant flow of takes and further hot takes. It may be Sesko bearing the brunt at present. But in a way, everyone is sacrificing something in this process.