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Imagine this: a happy Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, place that with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Do not bother finding a real picture of that miss; background information is your adversary. Then, include some goal stats in a large, silly font. Don't forget some emoticons. Share it everywhere.

Will you mention that Højlund's goal count features scores in the premier European competition while his counterpart does not compete in Europe? Certainly not. Nor would you highlight that four of Højlund's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Slovenia and generates many more chances. You manage social media for a large outlet, pure interaction is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

Thus the cycle of online material spins. Your next task is to scan a 44-minute podcast with Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where Schmeichel qualifies his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. No one needs that. Just ensure "strange" and "Sesko" are paired in the headline. People will be furious.

The Season of Potential and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my preferred periods to observe football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are still fresh, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the season ahead are planting their flags. The summer market is shut. No one is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are in contention. At this precise point, anything is possible.

However, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my least favourite times to read about football. Because although no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is resurgent. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league right now? We need a decision now.

Sesko as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to withhold definitive judgment, to let technical development and strategic understanding to mature. And the imperative to generate instant definitive judgment, a constant stream of takes and jokes, context-free criticisms and meaningless contrasts, a puzzle that can not truly be solved.

I do not propose to offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's time at United so far. He has been in the lineup on four occasions in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and had a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we analysing? And do I propose to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts argue passionately on a popular show over whether he needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this year (one pundit), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I loved watching Sesko at his former club: a big, fast sports car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: given the license to attack but also the freedom to miss. And in part this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in roughly the duration it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most pitiless gap between the time and air he needs, and the time and air he is going to get.

There was a case of this over the international break, when a widely shared chart conveniently informed us that the player had been judged – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a poll of football representatives. And of course, the press are by no means the only ones in this. Club channels, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: everybody with a vested interest is now essentially operating along the same principles, an environment deliberately geared for provocation.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to us? Do we realize, on any level, what this endless sluice of irritation is doing to our minds? Separate from the essential weirdness of playing in the middle of it all, knowing on a bizarre chain-reaction level that every single thing about them is now essentially material, product, open-source property to be packaged and exchanged.

And yes, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that continues to feed the cycle, a major institution that must constantly be producing the big feelings. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of opinion most clearly and harshly observed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been desiring players, praising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, many of those same players are now being dismissed as failures. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the point of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that Sesko faces Liverpool on Sunday: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at home in the league and yet in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like filing a missing person’s report on someone who went to the shops half an hour ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah past his prime. Alexander Isak waste of money. The coach losing his hair.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football itself, to influence the way we view it, an entire sport reoriented around discussion topics and immediate responses, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we browse through our phones, incapable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and further hot takes. It may be this player bearing the brunt right now. However, everyone is sacrificing something here.