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Imagine the following: a happy Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Next, juxtapose that with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, looking as if he's missed a sitter. Do not bother finding a real picture of that miss; background information is the enemy. Now, add some goal stats in a large, silly font. Don't forget some emoticons. Post it across all platforms.

Will you mention that Højlund's goal count includes scores in the premier European competition while Sesko does not compete in Europe? Certainly not. And would you note that several of the Dane's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and creates far more chances. If you manage online for a large outlet, pure interaction is your livelihood, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

Thus the cycle of content turns. Your next task is to scan a 44-minute interview with the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where he qualifies his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. No one needs that. Simply ensure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired in the headline. People will be outraged.

This Time of Promise and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has long been one of my favourite times to observe football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are newly formed, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the season ahead are planting their flags. The transfer window is closed. Nobody is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are in contention. Right now, anything is possible.

Yet, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. For while nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is resurgent. The German talent has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league right now? Please a decision now.

Sesko as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to withhold final conclusions, to let technical development and tactical sophistication to mature. And the demand to generate permanent verdicts, a constant stream of opinions and jokes, out-of-context condemnations and pointless comparisons, a square that can never truly be circled.

It is not my aim to provide a in-depth analysis of Sesko's time at United so far. The guy has started four times in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and taken a mere of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? And will I attempt to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits argue thrillingly on a podcast over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be a success this year (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I enjoyed watching him at his former club: a powerful, screeching sports car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: afforded the license to attack but also the leeway to miss. Partly this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in roughly the duration it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most pitiless gulf between the patience and space he requires, and the opportunity he is going to get.

There was an example of this during the international break, when a viral chart conveniently informed us that Sesko had been judged – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of football representatives. And of course, the media are not the only ones in this. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: all parties with skin in the game is now essentially aligned along the identical rules, an environment deliberately geared for controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? Are we aware, on any level, what this infinite stream of irritation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of playing in the center of it all, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about players is now basically content, commodity, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, partly this is because it's Manchester 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 swing of judgment most clearly and harshly observed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been coveting players, eulogising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those same players are now being dismissed as failures. Is it time to worry about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that he meets Liverpool on Sunday: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at home in the league and yet in their own state of feverish crisis, like filing a a report on a person who went to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Their star finished. The striker an expensive flop. The coach losing his hair.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has started to replace football itself, to influence the way we view it, an whole competition reoriented around talking points and immediate responses, an activity that happens in the background while we scroll through our phones, incapable to detach from the constant flow of opinions and further hot takes. Perhaps Sesko bearing the brunt at present. But in a way, we're all sacrificing something in this process.