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Picture the following: a happy Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Now, place it with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Do not bother locating an actual photo of that miss; context is your adversary. Then, add some goal stats in a big, silly font. Don't forget the emojis. Share it across all platforms.

Would you mention that Højlund's tally includes scores in the Champions League while his counterpart does not compete in continental tournaments? Of course not. And would you note that several of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Slovenia and generates far more chances. If you manage social media for a large outlet, raw engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the prime target, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

So the cycle of online material turns. Your next task is to scan a 44-minute interview with Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "weird". Just before, where he qualifies his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. Nobody wants that. Just make sure "strange" and "Sesko" are paired in the headline. The audience will be outraged.

This Time of Promise and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my favourite times to watch football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, squads and strategies are still fresh, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the coming months are staking their claims. The transfer window is shut. No one is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. All teams are still in the game. Right now, anything is possible.

However, for similar 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. Jack Grealish is resurgent. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league at this moment? Please an answer immediately.

Sesko as Patient Zero

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player caught between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The need to delay definitive judgment, allowing technical development and tactical sophistication to develop. And the demand to produce permanent verdicts, a constant stream of opinions and jokes, out-of-context criticisms and pointless contrasts, a puzzle that can never truly be circled.

I do not propose to offer a in-depth analysis of Sesko's time at Manchester United to date. He has started on four occasions in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and had a grand total of 116 touches. What precisely are we evaluating? And do I propose to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts argue passionately on a popular show over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be a success this season (one pundit), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at his former club: a big, screeching sports car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: given the license to attack but also the leeway to fail. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in roughly the duration it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most ruthless gap between the time and air he requires, and the opportunity he is going to get.

We saw a case of this during the international break, when a viral chart conveniently informed us that the player had been judged – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of football representatives. And of course, the press are not the only ones in such behavior. 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 deliberately geared for provocation.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to ourselves? Do we realize, on any level, what this endless stream of aggravation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of playing in the center of it all, knowing on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that every single thing about players is now basically material, commodity, public property to be repackaged and traded.

Indeed, in part this is because United are United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the cycle, a big club that must constantly be producing the big feelings. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of judgment most visibly and harshly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been desiring players, praising them, drooling over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, many of those very players are now being dismissed as broken goods. Is it time to worry about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker 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 their stadium in the Premier League and yet in their own state of perceived turmoil, like filing a missing person’s report on someone who popped to the shops 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah past his prime. Alexander Isak waste of money. 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 inflect the way we view it, an entire sport reoriented around talking points and reaction, something that happens in the background while we scroll through our phones, unable to disconnect from the constant flow of takes and further hot takes. It may be this player taking the hit right now. But in a way, everyone is sacrificing something here.