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Picture this: a smiling the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Next, juxtapose it with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he's missed an open goal. Don't bother finding a real picture of that miss; background information is the enemy. Then, include statistics in a large, comical font. Remember the emojis. Post the image across all platforms.

Would you point out that Højlund's tally includes strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in Europe? Certainly not. And will you highlight that several of the Dane's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and creates far more scoring opportunities. You run social media for a large outlet, raw interaction is your livelihood, 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 lengthy interview featuring Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "weird". Just before, where Schmeichel qualifies his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. Nobody wants that. Simply make sure "strange" and "the player" appear together in the headline. People will be outraged.

The Season of Potential and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has long been one of my favourite times to watch football. Leaves fall, winds shift, squads and strategies are newly formed, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the season ahead are staking their claims. The summer market is closed. Nobody is mentioning the quadruple yet. Everyone are still in the game. Right now, all is possibility.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, this period has also 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 resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? We need an answer 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 imperative to delay final conclusions, to let technical development and tactical sophistication to develop. And the demand to produce instant verdicts, a constant stream of opinions and jokes, out-of-context condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a puzzle that can never truly be circled.

I do not propose to offer a in-depth analysis of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. The guy has been in the lineup on four occasions in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and taken a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we analysing? And do I propose to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel thrillingly on a podcast over whether he needs 10 goals to be a success this year (one pundit), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I enjoyed watching him at his former club: a powerful, screeching racing car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: afforded the freedom to rampage but also the leeway to fail. And in part 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 pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most ruthless gulf between the time and air he needs, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

We saw a case of this over the national team pause, when a viral chart conveniently stated that Sesko had been judged – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a poll of football representatives. Naturally, the media are by no means alone in this. Team social media, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially aligned along the identical rules, an ecosystem explicitly geared for controversy.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to us? Do we realize, on any level, what this infinite stream of aggravation is doing to our brains? Separate from the essential weirdness of playing in the middle of it all, knowing on a bizarre chain-reaction level that every single thing about players is now essentially material, commodity, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

And yes, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that keeps nourishing the narrative, a big club that must always be producing the big feelings. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a swing of opinion 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 footballers, praising them, salivating over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, many of those very players are already being dismissed as failures. Should we start to worry about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need their striker necessary? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that Sesko faces Liverpool on the weekend: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at home in the league and somehow in their own state of perceived turmoil, like filing a missing person’s report on someone who popped to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Their star past his prime. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. The coach losing his hair.

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 entire sport repivoted around talking points and immediate responses, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we scroll through our devices, incapable to disconnect from the constant flow of takes and more takes. It may be Sesko bearing the brunt at present. But in a way, we're all losing something here.