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Picture this: a smiling Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Next, juxtapose it with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he just missed a sitter. Don't worry finding an actual photo of him missing; context is your adversary. Now, include some goal stats in a big, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Share it across all platforms.

Would you mention that Højlund's tally features scores in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in Europe? Certainly not. Nor will you note that four of Højlund's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and creates many more chances. You run social media for a major brand, pure interaction is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the prime target, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

So the cycle of content turns. The next job is to scan a 44-minute interview featuring the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "weird". Just before, where Schmeichel qualifies his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. No one needs that. Just make sure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. People will be furious.

This Time of Promise and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my favourite times to observe football. Leaves fall, winds shift, squads and strategies are newly formed, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the season ahead are planting their flags. The summer market is closed. No one is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. All teams are in contention. At this precise point, all is possibility.

Yet, for similar 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 reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league right now? Please an answer now.

Sesko as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player caught between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to withhold definitive judgment, allowing layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to mature. And the demand to generate instant verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and memes, out-of-context condemnations and pointless comparisons, 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. He has been in the lineup on four occasions in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and taken a mere of 116 touches. What precisely are we analysing? Nor do I propose to replicate the pundits' notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits argue thrillingly on a podcast over whether he needs 10 goals to be a success this year (one pundit), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I loved watching him at his former club: a powerful, fast racing car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: afforded the freedom to attack but also the freedom to miss. Partly this is why Manchester 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 largest and most ruthless gulf between the time and air he requires, and the time and air he is going to get.

We saw an example of this over the international break, when a widely shared infographic conveniently stated that Sesko had been deemed – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a poll of 20 agents. And of course, the press are not alone in this. Club channels, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially operating along the identical rules, an environment explicitly nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to us? Are we aware, on any level, what this endless stream of irritation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the middle of this, knowing on some surreal chain-reaction level that every single thing about players is now basically material, product, public property to be packaged and exchanged.

Indeed, in part this is because United are United, the entity that continues to feed the cycle, a big club that must constantly be generating the big feelings. However, in part this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of opinion most clearly and cruelly glimpsed at this season, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. All summer long we have been coveting players, praising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, many of those same players are already being disdained as broken goods. Is it time to worry about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that he faces their rivals on Sunday: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at home in the Premier League and somehow in their own situation of feverish crisis, like submitting a a report on a person who popped to the store half an hour ago. Too open. Their star past his prime. Alexander Isak waste of money. The coach losing his hair.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to influence the way we watch it, an whole competition reoriented around talking points and reaction, something that occurs in the backdrop while we browse through our phones, unable to disconnect from the constant flow of takes and more takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit at present. However, we're all sacrificing something in this process.