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Imagine the following: a happy the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Now, juxtapose it with a dejected Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he's missed a sitter. Do not worry locating an actual photo of him missing; background information is the enemy. Then, add statistics in a big, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Share the image everywhere.

Would you point out that Højlund's goal count includes strikes in the premier European competition while his counterpart isn't playing in Europe? Certainly not. Nor would you note that four of Højlund's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is much stronger to Slovenia and creates far more chances. You run social media for a major brand, raw interaction is your livelihood, Manchester United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

So the wheel of content turns. Your next task is to sift through a lengthy podcast with the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where Schmeichel prefaces his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. No one needs that. Just ensure "strange" and "the player" are paired in the headline. The audience will be outraged.

This Time of Promise and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has long been one of my preferred periods to watch football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are newly formed, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the coming months are staking their claims. The summer market is shut. No one is talking about the quadruple yet. All teams are still in the game. At this precise point, anything is possible.

However, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is reborn. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? We need a decision now.

The Player as Patient Zero

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to withhold final conclusions, allowing layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to mature. And the demand to generate instant verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, out-of-context criticisms and pointless contrasts, a square that can not truly be solved.

It is not my aim to offer a substantive evaluation 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 grand total of 116 touches. What exactly are we evaluating? And do I propose to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits duel thrillingly on a podcast over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be a success this season (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I loved watching him at his former club: a big, fast racing car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: given the license to rampage but also the leeway to miss. And in part this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in about the time it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most ruthless gulf between the patience and space he requires, and the opportunity he is going to get.

There was a case of this over the international break, when a widely shared chart handily informed us that Sesko had been judged – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. And of course, the media are by no means alone in this. Team social media, influencers, 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 explicitly geared for controversy.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to ourselves? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite stream of aggravation is doing to our minds? Separate from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the middle of it all, aware on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that each aspect about players is now essentially content, product, public property to be repackaged and exchanged.

And yes, in part this is because United are United, the entity that keeps nourishing the cycle, a major institution that must always be producing the big feelings. But also, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of judgment most visibly and harshly observed at this season, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been desiring players, eulogising them, drooling over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, a lot of those very players are now being dismissed as failures. Is it time to be concerned about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that he faces Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at home in the Premier League and somehow in their own state of feverish crisis, like filing a missing person’s report on a person who popped to the shops 30 minutes ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah finished. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. The coach bald.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to influence the way we view it, an entire sport reoriented around discussion topics and reaction, an activity that happens in the backdrop while we browse through our phones, unable to disconnect from the constant flow of takes and more takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit at present. But in a way, we're all sacrificing something in this process.