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Picture the following: a happy the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Next, juxtapose that with a dejected Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, appearing like he just missed a sitter. Don't worry locating an actual photo of that miss; context is your adversary. Now, include some goal stats in a large, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Post the image everywhere.

Would you point out that Højlund's tally includes scores in the premier European competition while his counterpart does not compete in continental tournaments? Of course not. Nor would you highlight that four of the Dane's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and creates many more scoring opportunities. You manage social media for a large outlet, raw 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 scan a 44-minute interview with Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". Just before, where Schmeichel prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. No one wants that. Simply make sure "weird" and "Sesko" appear together in the headline. People will be outraged.

The Season of Potential and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my preferred times to watch football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, the teams and tactics are newly formed, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the coming months are planting their flags. The summer market is closed. No one is talking about the quadruple yet. Everyone are still in the game. At this precise point, anything is possible.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. For while nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is reborn. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league at this moment? Please a decision immediately.

The Player as Patient Zero

In many ways, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The need to delay final conclusions, allowing technical development and tactical sophistication to mature. And the demand to produce permanent verdicts, a constant stream of takes and jokes, context-free condemnations and meaningless contrasts, a square that can not truly be circled.

It is not my aim to provide a substantive analysis of Sesko's time at Manchester United to date. The guy has been in the lineup four times in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and had a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we evaluating? Nor do I propose to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits argue passionately on a podcast over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be a success this year (Neville), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at his former club: a powerful, fast racing car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: given the license to rampage but also the freedom to fail. Partly this is why 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 widest and most pitiless gulf between the time and air he needs, and the opportunity he is going to get.

There was an example of this over the international break, when a viral infographic conveniently stated that the player had been deemed – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a survey of football representatives. And of course, the media are not the only ones in this. Club channels, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with skin in the game is now essentially operating along the same principles, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to us? Do we realize, on some level, what this endless sluice of aggravation is doing to our brains? Separate from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the middle of this, knowing on some surreal butterfly-effect level that every single thing about players is now essentially material, product, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

And yes, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that continues to feed the cycle, a big club that must constantly be generating the strong emotions. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, a swing of judgment most visibly and harshly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been desiring footballers, praising them, salivating over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are already being disdained as failures. Should we start to worry about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the point of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that Sesko meets their rivals on Sunday: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at their stadium 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 store half an hour ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah finished. The striker waste of money. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to inflect the way we view it, an entire sport reoriented around discussion topics and immediate responses, something that happens 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, we're all losing a part of the experience here.