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Picture the following: a smiling the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Now, juxtapose it with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he just missed an open goal. Do not bother locating an actual photo of him missing; context is your adversary. Now, add statistics in a big, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Post the image across all platforms.

Will you point out that Højlund's goal count includes scores in the premier European competition while Sesko does not compete in continental tournaments? Certainly not. And would you note that four of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and generates many more chances. You manage social media for a major brand, raw engagement is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

So the cycle of online material turns. Your next task is to sift through a 44-minute interview with the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where Schmeichel prefaces his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. Nobody needs that. Simply ensure "strange" and "the player" appear together in the title. The audience will be outraged.

This Time of Potential and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my favourite periods to observe football. Leaves fall, winds shift, the teams and tactics are still fresh, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the coming months are planting their flags. The transfer window is shut. Nobody is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are still in the game. At this precise point, anything is possible.

However, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. For while nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league at this moment? Please a decision now.

The Player as The Prime Example

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The need to withhold final conclusions, allowing layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to develop. And the imperative to generate instant verdicts, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, context-free criticisms and pointless contrasts, a square that can never truly be solved.

It is not my aim to offer a in-depth analysis of Sesko's time at Manchester United to date. He has been in the lineup on four occasions in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and had a grand total of 116 touches. What precisely are we analysing? Nor do I propose to duplicate the pundits' notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel thrillingly on a popular show over whether he needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this year (Neville), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I enjoyed watching Sesko at Leipzig: a big, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: given the license to attack but also the leeway to miss. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most ruthless gap between the time and air he requires, and the time and air he is going to get.

We saw an example of this during the national team pause, when a viral chart conveniently informed us that the player had been deemed – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a poll of 20 agents. And of course, the press are by no means alone in this. Team social media, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with skin in the game is now basically aligned along the identical rules, an environment deliberately nosed towards provocation.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? 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 middle of it all, knowing on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about them is now essentially content, commodity, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

And yes, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that continues to feed the cycle, a big club that must constantly be producing the strong emotions. But also, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of judgment most visibly and cruelly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been desiring footballers, praising them, salivating over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, a lot of those same players are already being disdained as failures. Should we start to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker necessary? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that he meets their rivals on Sunday: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and somehow in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like submitting a missing person’s report on someone who popped to the store 30 minutes ago. Too open. Their star past his prime. The striker an expensive flop. Arne Slot bald.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football itself, to inflect the way we view it, an whole competition repivoted around talking points and reaction, an activity that happens in the background while we scroll through our phones, unable to detach from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit right now. But in a way, everyone is sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.