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Imagine the following: a smiling the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Now, juxtapose that with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, appearing like he's missed an open goal. Do not worry locating a real picture of that miss; background information is the enemy. Then, include some goal stats in a large, silly font. Remember the emojis. Share the image everywhere.

Will you point out that Højlund's tally includes scores in the Champions League while his counterpart isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. Nor would you note that four of the Dane's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that his national team is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and generates many more chances. If you manage online for a large outlet, raw interaction is your livelihood, Manchester United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

Thus the wheel of content turns. The next job is to sift through a 44-minute podcast featuring the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". Just before, where Schmeichel qualifies his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. Nobody needs that. Simply ensure "strange" and "the player" appear together in the headline. People will be furious.

This Time of Potential and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has long been one of my preferred periods to observe football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are still fresh, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the season ahead are planting their flags. The transfer window is closed. Nobody is talking about the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are in contention. Right now, anything is possible.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my most disliked times to read about football. For while no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league at this moment? Please a decision immediately.

The Player as Patient Zero

In many ways, Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player caught between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to withhold definitive judgment, to let layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to mature. And the demand to generate permanent verdicts, a constant stream of opinions and jokes, out-of-context criticisms and pointless comparisons, a puzzle that can not truly be solved.

It is not my aim to provide a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's time at United so far. The guy has been in the lineup on four occasions in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and had a mere of 116 touches. What precisely are we analysing? And do I propose to duplicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts argue passionately on a popular show over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be a success this year (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I enjoyed watching him at Leipzig: a big, screeching racing car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: given the freedom to attack but also the freedom to miss. And in part this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in about the time it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most pitiless gap between the patience and space he needs, and the opportunity he is going to get.

There was an example of this over the national team pause, when a widely shared chart conveniently stated that the player had been deemed – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a survey of 20 agents. Naturally, the media are by no means alone in this. Club channels, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially operating along the same principles, an environment deliberately geared for controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to us? Do we realize, on some level, what this infinite stream of irritation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of playing in the center of it all, aware on some surreal chain-reaction level that every single thing about them is now essentially material, product, public property to be packaged and traded.

And yes, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that keeps nourishing the cycle, a major institution that must constantly be producing the strong emotions. But also, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of judgment most visibly and harshly observed at this season, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been coveting players, eulogising them, salivating over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, many of those same players are already being dismissed as failures. Should we start to worry about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that Sesko faces Liverpool on the weekend: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at home in the Premier League and somehow in their own state of feverish crisis, like filing a missing person’s report on a person who went to the store half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah past his prime. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. The coach bald.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to inflect the way we view it, an whole competition reoriented around discussion topics and immediate responses, an activity that happens in the background while we browse through our devices, unable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and further hot takes. It may be this player taking the hit at present. But in a way, we're all losing a part of the experience in this process.