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Imagine the following: a happy the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Now, place it with a dejected the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Don't worry finding a real picture of that miss; context is your adversary. Then, include statistics in a big, silly font. Don't forget the emojis. Share the image across all platforms.

Would you mention that Højlund's tally features strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in Europe? Certainly not. Nor will you note 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 many more chances. If you manage online for a major brand, pure engagement is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

So the wheel of content turns. Your next task is to sift through a 44-minute podcast with the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he describes the signing 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. Nobody needs that. Simply ensure "strange" and "the player" appear together in the title. People will be outraged.

The Season of Potential and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has long been one of my preferred times to watch football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are still fresh, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the coming months are planting their flags. The transfer window is shut. Nobody is talking about the quadruple yet. Everyone are in contention. At this precise point, anything is possible.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, this period has also been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. Because although no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league right now? We need an answer now.

The Player as The Prime Example

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The need to delay definitive judgment, to let technical development and tactical sophistication to mature. And the imperative to generate permanent definitive judgment, a constant stream of opinions and memes, context-free criticisms and meaningless contrasts, a square that can not truly be solved.

It is not my aim to provide a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's time at United so far. He has been in the lineup four times in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and taken a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we evaluating? And do I propose to replicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts argue thrillingly on a podcast over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this year (one pundit), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at his former club: a big, screeching racing car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: afforded the license to rampage but also the freedom to fail. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in about the time it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most pitiless gap between the patience and space he needs, and the opportunity he is going to get.

There was an example of this over the national team pause, when a viral chart conveniently stated that Sesko had been deemed – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a survey of 20 agents. Naturally, the press are not alone in such behavior. Club channels, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially aligned along the same principles, an environment explicitly nosed towards controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to ourselves? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite sluice of irritation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of playing in the middle of it all, aware on some surreal chain-reaction level that each aspect about them is now essentially material, commodity, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

And yes, partly this is because United are United, the entity that keeps nourishing the cycle, a major institution that must constantly be producing the big feelings. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of judgment most clearly and cruelly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been coveting players, praising them, drooling over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, many of those same players are now being dismissed as failures. Should we start to worry about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the point of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that he meets Liverpool on the weekend: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at home in the league and somehow in their own situation of feverish crisis, like submitting a missing person’s report on a person who popped to the store half an hour ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah finished. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. The coach bald.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has started to replace football the actual game, to influence the way we watch it, an whole competition reoriented around talking points and reaction, something that happens in the backdrop while we scroll through our phones, incapable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. It may be this player bearing the brunt right now. However, we're all losing a part of the experience here.