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Imagine the following: a smiling the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Next, place that with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, appearing like he just missed a sitter. Do not bother finding a real picture of him missing; context is the enemy. Now, include some goal stats in a large, comical font. Remember some emoticons. Share the image across all platforms.

Will you point out that Højlund's tally features scores in the premier European competition while Sesko does not compete in continental tournaments? Of course not. Nor would you highlight that four of the Dane's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that his national team is much stronger to Slovenia and generates far more chances. If you run social media for a large outlet, pure engagement is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and context is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of online material spins. The next job is to sift through a 44-minute interview featuring 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 "weird" and "the player" appear together in the headline. People will be outraged.

This Time of Promise and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my preferred times to watch football. Leaves fall, winds shift, the teams and tactics are newly formed, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the coming months are planting their flags. The summer market is shut. No one is mentioning the quadruple yet. Everyone are still in the game. At this precise point, anything is possible.

Yet, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my least favourite times to read about football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. The German talent has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league right now? Please a decision now.

The Player as Patient Zero

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The need to delay definitive judgment, allowing technical development and strategic understanding to develop. And the imperative to produce permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, context-free criticisms and meaningless comparisons, a square that can never truly be solved.

I do not propose to provide a in-depth analysis of Sesko's stint at United to date. 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 exactly are we evaluating? Nor do I propose to replicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits duel thrillingly on a popular show over whether he needs ten strikes to be a success this year (one pundit), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I enjoyed watching Sesko at Leipzig: a powerful, screeching sports car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: afforded the freedom to attack but also the leeway to fail. 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 about the time it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most ruthless gap between the patience and space he needs, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

There was an example of this over the international break, when a viral infographic handily stated that the player had been judged – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a poll of football representatives. Naturally, the media are not the only ones in this. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of fake followers: everybody with skin in the game is now essentially operating along the same principles, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to us? Do we realize, on some level, what this infinite stream of aggravation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the center of this, knowing on some surreal butterfly-effect level that each aspect about players is now basically content, commodity, public property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that continues to feed the cycle, a major institution that must constantly be generating the strong emotions. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of opinion most clearly and cruelly glimpsed at this time of year, about a month after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been coveting footballers, praising them, drooling over them. Now, just a few weeks in, many of those very players are now being dismissed as broken goods. Is it time to worry about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that he meets their rivals on Sunday: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the Premier League and yet in their own state of perceived turmoil, like filing a missing person’s report on someone who went to the shops half an hour ago. Too open. Their star finished. Alexander Isak waste of money. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football itself, to inflect the way we watch it, an entire sport reoriented around talking points and immediate responses, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we scroll through our devices, incapable to detach from the constant flow of takes and more takes. It may be Sesko bearing the brunt at present. However, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience here.