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Imagine the following: a happy the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Next, juxtapose that with a dejected Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, appearing like he's missed an open goal. Do not worry finding a real picture of him missing; context is the enemy. Then, include some goal stats in a large, comical font. Don't forget some emoticons. Post the image across all platforms.

Will you point out that Højlund's goal count features strikes in the Champions League while Sesko isn't playing in Europe? Certainly not. Nor would you note that several of the Dane's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is far superior to Slovenia and creates many more chances. You manage online for a major brand, pure engagement is your livelihood, United are the biggest draw, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the cycle of content turns. The next job is to sift through a 44-minute podcast featuring the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "weird". Just before, where Schmeichel qualifies his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. No one needs that. Just make sure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. The audience will be furious.

This Time of Promise and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my preferred periods to watch football. Leaves fall, winds shift, squads and strategies are newly formed, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the coming months are staking their claims. The summer market is closed. No one is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are still in the game. Right now, anything is possible.

However, for many of the same reasons, this period has long been one of my least favourite times to read about football. Because although no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is resurgent. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league at this moment? We need an answer now.

The Player as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to withhold final conclusions, to let technical development and strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to generate permanent definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of takes and memes, context-free criticisms and meaningless contrasts, a puzzle that can never truly be solved.

It is not my aim to provide a substantive analysis of Sesko's stint 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 evaluating? And do I propose to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits duel passionately on a podcast over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this year (one pundit), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I enjoyed watching Sesko at Leipzig: a powerful, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: afforded the license to rampage but also the freedom to fail. Partly this is why 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 pitiless gulf between the patience and space he requires, and the time and air he is going to get.

There was a case of this over the national team pause, when a viral chart handily informed us that the player had been judged – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a survey of 20 agents. 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: everybody with skin in the game is now basically aligned along the same principles, an ecosystem deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to us? Are we aware, on any level, what this infinite sluice of irritation is doing to our minds? Separate from the essential weirdness of being a player in the middle of it all, aware on some surreal butterfly-effect level that every single thing about them is now essentially content, product, public property to be packaged and traded.

And yes, in part this is because United are United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a big club that must constantly be generating the big feelings. However, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of opinion most visibly and cruelly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. All summer long we have been coveting players, eulogising them, drooling over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, many of those very players are already being dismissed as broken goods. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker wise? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that he meets Liverpool on Sunday: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and yet in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like submitting a a report on a person who popped to the shops 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah finished. The striker waste of money. Arne Slot bald.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football itself, to influence the way we view it, an whole competition reoriented around discussion topics and reaction, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we browse through our phones, incapable to detach from the constant flow of takes and more takes. Perhaps Sesko bearing the brunt at present. But in a way, everyone is losing a part of the experience in this process.