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Picture this: a happy the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Next, place it with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, appearing like he's missed an open goal. Don't bother finding a real picture of him missing; background information is the enemy. Now, add statistics in a big, silly font. Don't forget the emojis. Share it everywhere.

Would you mention that Højlund's tally features strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. Nor would you note that several of Højlund's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and generates far more chances. You manage social media for a major brand, pure engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

So the cycle of online material spins. Your next task is to scan a lengthy interview featuring Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where he prefaces his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. Nobody needs that. Simply ensure "strange" and "the player" are paired in the headline. People will be furious.

The Season of Potential and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my favourite times to watch football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are newly formed, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the season ahead are staking their claims. The transfer window is shut. No one is talking about the quadruple yet. All teams are in contention. At this precise point, all is possibility.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, this period has long been one of my least favourite times to read about football. For while nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is reborn. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league right now? We need a decision immediately.

The Player as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The need to withhold definitive judgment, allowing technical development and tactical sophistication to develop. And the demand to generate instant verdicts, a constant stream of opinions and jokes, context-free criticisms and meaningless comparisons, a square that can never truly be solved.

It is not my aim to offer a in-depth analysis of Sesko's stint at United so far. He has started four times in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and had a mere of 116 touches. What precisely are we analysing? Nor do I propose to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits duel thrillingly on a podcast over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be a success this year (Neville), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I loved watching him at his former club: a powerful, fast sports car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: afforded the license to rampage but also the freedom to fail. Partly this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most ruthless gap between the patience and space 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 widely shared chart handily informed us that Sesko had been deemed – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of football representatives. And of course, the media are not alone in such behavior. Team social media, influencers, 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 geared for controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to us? Do we realize, on some level, what this endless stream of irritation is doing to our minds? Separate from the inherent strangeness of playing in the middle of this, knowing on some surreal butterfly-effect level that every single thing about them is now essentially content, commodity, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that continues to feed the narrative, a major institution that must always be generating the strong emotions. However, in part this is a temporary malaise, a swing of judgment most visibly and harshly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been desiring players, eulogising them, salivating over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, a lot of those same players are now being dismissed as broken goods. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that Sesko faces their rivals 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 submitting a missing person’s report on someone who went to the store 30 minutes ago. Too open. Their star finished. The striker waste of money. The coach bald.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football itself, to influence the way we watch it, an entire sport reoriented around discussion topics and immediate responses, an activity that occurs in the background while we browse through our devices, incapable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and further hot takes. Perhaps this player taking the hit at present. But in a way, everyone is losing a part of the experience in this process.