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Picture the following: a smiling the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Now, juxtapose that with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, looking as if he's missed an open goal. Don't worry locating a real picture of that miss; background information is your adversary. Now, add statistics in a large, silly font. Don't forget some emoticons. Share the image everywhere.

Would you point out that Højlund's tally features scores in the Champions League while Sesko does not compete in continental tournaments? Certainly not. And would you note that four of Højlund's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that Denmark is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and creates many more scoring opportunities. If you run online for a major brand, raw interaction is what pays the bills, United are the biggest draw, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

So the wheel of online material turns. The next job is to scan a 44-minute podcast with the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where he prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. Nobody wants that. Just ensure "strange" and "Sesko" are paired in the headline. The audience will be furious.

The Season of Promise and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has long been one of my preferred periods to watch football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, squads and strategies are newly formed, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the coming months are staking their claims. The summer market is closed. No one is mentioning the quadruple yet. Everyone are in contention. Right now, anything is possible.

Yet, for similar reasons, this period has long been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. For while nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league right now? We need a decision now.

Sesko as The Prime Example

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to delay final conclusions, to let layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to mature. And the demand to generate instant definitive judgment, a constant stream of takes and jokes, out-of-context condemnations and pointless comparisons, a puzzle that can never truly be circled.

It is not my aim to offer a substantive evaluation of Sesko's time at Manchester United so far. The guy has started on four occasions in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and taken a grand total of 116 touches. What precisely are we evaluating? Nor will I attempt to replicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits duel thrillingly on a popular show over whether he needs 10 goals to be a success this year (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I loved watching Sesko at Leipzig: a powerful, fast racing car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: given the license to rampage but also the freedom to miss. Partly this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in about the time it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most pitiless gulf between the time and air he needs, and the time and air he is going to get.

There was an example of this over the international break, when a viral infographic handily informed us that Sesko had been deemed – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of football representatives. Naturally, the media are not the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: all parties with skin in the game is now basically operating along the identical rules, an ecosystem explicitly geared for provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to ourselves? Are we aware, on any level, what this infinite sluice of aggravation is doing to our minds? Separate from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the middle of this, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about players is now basically content, product, public property to be packaged and exchanged.

And yes, partly this is because United are United, the entity that keeps nourishing the cycle, a major institution that must constantly be generating the big feelings. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of judgment most visibly and harshly observed at this time of year, about a month after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been coveting footballers, eulogising them, drooling over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, many of those very players are now being disdained as broken goods. Is it time to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the point of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that he faces Liverpool on the weekend: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at home in the league and somehow in their own state of perceived turmoil, like filing a a report on a person who went to the store 30 minutes ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah finished. Alexander Isak waste of money. The coach bald.

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 repivoted around talking points and immediate responses, something that happens in the background while we scroll through our devices, unable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. It may be Sesko bearing the brunt at present. But in a way, we're all losing a part of the experience here.