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Picture the following: a happy the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Next, juxtapose that with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he's missed a sitter. Do not worry finding a real picture of that miss; background information is your adversary. Then, add statistics in a big, comical font. Don't forget some emoticons. Post the image everywhere.

Will you point out that Højlund's goal count features scores in the premier European competition while his counterpart isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. Nor will you note that several of Højlund's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and generates far more scoring opportunities. You manage social media for a large outlet, pure interaction is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the cycle of content spins. The next job is to sift through a 44-minute interview featuring the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "strange". Just before, where he qualifies his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. Nobody wants that. Simply make sure "weird" and "the player" appear together in the headline. The audience will be furious.

The Season of Promise and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my preferred times to watch football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, the teams and tactics are still fresh, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the season ahead are staking their claims. The summer market is shut. No one is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are in contention. Right now, anything is possible.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, this period has long been one of my most disliked times to read about football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league right now? We need a decision now.

Sesko as Patient Zero

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to withhold definitive judgment, to let layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to mature. And the imperative to produce instant verdicts, a constant stream of takes and jokes, context-free criticisms and pointless contrasts, a square that can not truly be solved.

I do not propose to offer a substantive evaluation of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. He has been in the lineup on four occasions in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and had 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 "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits argue passionately on a popular show over whether he needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this season (Neville), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (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 ideally suited to his talents: afforded the freedom to attack but also the leeway to fail. And in part this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" 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.

We saw a case of this over the national team pause, when a widely shared chart conveniently informed us that the player had been judged – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the press are not alone in this. Club channels, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: all parties with skin in the game is now basically operating along the same principles, an ecosystem explicitly geared for controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to ourselves? Do we realize, on some level, what this infinite stream of irritation is doing to our brains? Separate from the essential weirdness of playing in the center of it all, aware on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that each aspect about players is now essentially content, product, open-source property to be packaged and exchanged.

And yes, partly this is because United are United, the corpse that continues to feed the narrative, a big club that must constantly be producing the big feelings. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a swing of opinion most clearly and cruelly observed at this time of year, about a month after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been coveting players, praising them, drooling over them. Now, only a handful of games later, a lot of those same players are already being dismissed as failures. Should we start to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker wise? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that Sesko faces Liverpool on Sunday: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the league and somehow in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like filing a a report on a person who went to the shops half an hour ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah finished. The striker waste of money. Arne Slot bald.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has started to replace football itself, to inflect the way we watch it, an entire sport repivoted around discussion topics and immediate responses, something that occurs in the backdrop while we browse through our devices, unable to disconnect from the constant flow of opinions and further hot takes. Perhaps Sesko bearing the brunt at present. But in a way, everyone is losing a part of the experience here.