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Picture the following: a happy the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Next, place it with a dejected Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Do not bother finding an actual photo of him missing; background information is the enemy. Then, add some goal stats in a large, comical font. Remember the emojis. Post the image across all platforms.

Will you mention that Højlund's tally includes scores in the Champions League while his counterpart does not compete in continental tournaments? Of course not. Nor would you note that four of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Slovenia and creates many more chances. If you manage social media for a large outlet, pure engagement is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

So the cycle of content spins. Your next task is to scan a 44-minute interview featuring Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "strange". Just before, where Schmeichel prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. Nobody needs that. Just make sure "strange" and "Sesko" appear together in the headline. People will be furious.

The Season of Potential and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my preferred times to observe football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, squads and strategies are newly formed, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the season ahead are planting their flags. The transfer window is closed. Nobody is talking about the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are still in the game. At this precise point, 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 nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is resurgent. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? We need an answer now.

The Player as The Prime Example

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The need to withhold definitive judgment, allowing technical development and strategic understanding to mature. And the demand to generate instant verdicts, a constant stream of opinions and memes, context-free criticisms and meaningless comparisons, a puzzle that can not truly be solved.

It is not my aim to provide a substantive analysis of Sesko's time at Manchester United to date. He has been in the lineup on four occasions in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and taken a grand total of 116 touches. What precisely are we evaluating? Nor do I propose to duplicate the pundits' notable debate "The Sesko Debate", 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 is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I enjoyed watching Sesko at his former club: a powerful, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: given the license to attack but also the freedom to fail. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most pitiless gulf between the patience and space he needs, and the opportunity he is going to get.

We saw an example of this during the national team pause, when a widely shared chart handily informed us that Sesko had been deemed – decisively – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a poll of football representatives. Naturally, the press are not alone in such behavior. Club channels, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with a vested interest is now basically operating along the identical rules, an ecosystem deliberately geared for controversy.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this endless sluice of irritation is doing to our brains? Separate from the inherent strangeness of playing in the middle of it all, knowing on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that each aspect about players is now essentially content, product, public property to be repackaged and traded.

And yes, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that continues to feed the cycle, a major institution that must always be generating the big feelings. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of judgment most visibly and cruelly glimpsed at this time of year, about a month after the window has closed. All summer long we have been desiring footballers, praising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are now being disdained as failures. Should we start to worry about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker wise? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that he meets their rivals on Sunday: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at home in the Premier League and somehow in their own situation of feverish crisis, like submitting a a report on a person who went to the shops half an hour ago. Too open. Their star finished. The striker an expensive flop. The coach bald.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has started to replace football itself, to influence the way we view it, an entire sport reoriented around discussion topics and immediate responses, something that happens in the background while we browse through our phones, incapable to detach from the constant flow of opinions and further hot takes. Perhaps Sesko taking the hit at present. However, we're all losing something here.