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Picture the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Next, place it with a dejected the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he's missed an open goal. Don't bother finding a real picture of him missing; context is the enemy. Then, include some goal stats in a big, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Share it everywhere.

Would you mention that Højlund's goal count includes scores in the Champions League while his counterpart does not compete in continental tournaments? Certainly not. Nor will you highlight that several of the Dane's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is much stronger to Slovenia and creates far more chances. You manage social media for a major brand, pure interaction is your livelihood, United are the biggest draw, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of content turns. The next job is to scan a 44-minute podcast featuring Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where Schmeichel qualifies his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. Nobody wants that. Simply make sure "strange" and "Sesko" are paired in the headline. People will be outraged.

This Time of Potential and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has long been one of my preferred periods to observe football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are newly formed, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the season ahead are planting their flags. The summer market is closed. Nobody is mentioning the quadruple yet. All teams are still in the game. Right now, anything is possible.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, this period has also been one of my least favourite times to read about football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is reborn. The German talent has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league at this moment? Please an answer immediately.

Sesko as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player caught between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to delay final conclusions, allowing layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to develop. And the imperative to generate instant definitive judgment, a constant stream of opinions and jokes, context-free condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a square that can not truly be circled.

I do not propose to offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's stint at United to date. The guy has been in the lineup on four occasions in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and had a grand total of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? Nor will I attempt to duplicate the pundits' notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts argue passionately on a popular show over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be a success this year (Neville), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching him at his former club: a big, fast sports car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: given the license to rampage but also the leeway to miss. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in roughly the duration it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most pitiless gap between the time and air he needs, and the time and air he is going to get.

We saw an example of this over the international break, when a widely shared chart conveniently stated that the player had been deemed – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of football representatives. And of course, the press are not alone in this. Club channels, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of fake followers: all parties with skin in the game is now essentially aligned along the same principles, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this endless stream of aggravation is doing to our brains? Separate from the essential weirdness of being a player in the center of it all, knowing on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about players is now basically material, product, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that keeps nourishing the cycle, a big club that must always be producing the strong emotions. But also, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of judgment most visibly and cruelly observed at this time of year, about a month after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been desiring footballers, eulogising them, drooling over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are already being dismissed as failures. Is it time to worry about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that Sesko faces Liverpool on Sunday: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the league and somehow in their own state of feverish crisis, like filing a missing person’s report on someone who popped to the store 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah past his prime. The striker an expensive flop. Arne Slot bald.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football itself, to influence the way we view it, an entire sport repivoted around discussion topics and reaction, an activity that occurs in the background while we scroll through our phones, unable to detach from the constant flow of takes and further hot takes. It may be this player bearing the brunt right now. But in a way, we're all sacrificing something in this process.