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Picture this: a smiling Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Next, place it with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Do not bother locating an actual photo of that miss; background information is your adversary. Now, include some goal stats in a large, comical font. Don't forget some emoticons. Post the image everywhere.

Will you point out that Højlund's tally includes scores in the Champions League while his counterpart isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. Nor would you note that several of the Dane's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and creates many more scoring opportunities. If you manage social media for a large outlet, raw engagement is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

So the wheel of online material spins. Your next task is to sift through a 44-minute podcast featuring Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where Schmeichel prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. No one needs that. Just make sure "weird" and "the player" appear together in the title. People will be outraged.

The Season of Potential and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my favourite periods to observe football. The leaves swirl, 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 shut. Nobody is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are in contention. At this precise point, all is possibility.

However, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn 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. The City winger is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league right now? Please a decision immediately.

Sesko as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player caught between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to withhold definitive judgment, to let technical development and strategic understanding to mature. And the demand to produce permanent 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 provide a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's time at Manchester United to date. He has started four times in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and had a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we evaluating? Nor will I attempt to replicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts duel thrillingly on a popular show over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this season (Neville), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I enjoyed watching him at Leipzig: a powerful, fast sports car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: given the freedom to attack but also the leeway to miss. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most ruthless gap between the time and air he requires, and the opportunity he is going to get.

There was an example of this during the international break, when a widely shared infographic handily informed us that Sesko had been deemed – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a poll of football representatives. And of course, the press are by no means the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, 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 explicitly nosed towards controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to ourselves? Do we realize, on some level, what this infinite sluice of irritation is doing to our minds? Separate from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the center of it all, aware on some surreal chain-reaction level that each aspect about players is now basically material, commodity, public property to be packaged and exchanged.

And yes, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that continues to feed the cycle, a big club that must always be producing the strong emotions. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, a swing of judgment most visibly and cruelly glimpsed at this time of year, about a month after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been coveting players, praising them, salivating over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, many of those very players are already being disdained as failures. Should we start to worry about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker necessary? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that Sesko faces their rivals on Sunday: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at home in the league and yet in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like submitting a a report on someone who went to the store 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah finished. The striker an expensive flop. The coach losing his hair.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to influence the way we watch it, an entire sport repivoted around talking points and reaction, something that happens in the background while we browse through our phones, unable to detach from the constant flow of takes and more takes. It may be Sesko bearing the brunt right now. But in a way, everyone is sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.