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Picture the following: a smiling the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Now, place it with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Don't worry finding an actual photo of him missing; background information is the enemy. Now, include statistics in a big, silly font. Don't forget some emoticons. Post it everywhere.

Will you mention that Højlund's tally features scores in the Champions League while Sesko isn't playing in continental tournaments? Of course not. Nor would you note that four of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that his national team is far superior to Slovenia and creates many more scoring opportunities. If you manage social media for a large outlet, raw engagement is what pays the bills, United are the biggest draw, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of online material spins. The next job is to scan a 44-minute podcast featuring the legendary goalkeeper 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"... yes, remove that part. Nobody wants that. Just make sure "weird" and "the player" appear together in the headline. People will be furious.

This Time of Potential and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my favourite times to watch football. Leaves fall, winds shift, squads and strategies are newly formed, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the season ahead are planting their flags. The transfer window is shut. Nobody is talking about the quadruple yet. Everyone are in contention. Right now, all is possibility.

Yet, for many of the same 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 resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league right now? We need a decision immediately.

Sesko as Patient Zero

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player caught between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to withhold final conclusions, to let layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to mature. And the imperative to generate instant definitive judgment, a constant stream of opinions and memes, context-free condemnations and pointless comparisons, a puzzle that can not truly be solved.

It is not my aim to offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's stint at United to date. He has started four times in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and had a grand total of 116 touches. What precisely are we evaluating? Nor do I propose to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits argue passionately on a podcast over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be a success this season (one pundit), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at Leipzig: a big, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: afforded the license to attack but also the leeway to fail. Partly this is why 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 widest and most ruthless gap between the time and air he requires, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

We saw a case of this over the national team pause, when a widely shared chart handily stated that the player had been deemed – decisively – the worst signing of the recent market by a survey of 20 agents. And of course, the press are not the only ones 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 operating along the identical rules, an environment deliberately geared for provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to us? Do we realize, on any level, what this endless sluice of aggravation is doing to our minds? 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 material, product, public property to be repackaged and traded.

Indeed, partly this is because United are United, the entity that keeps nourishing the narrative, a big club that must constantly be generating the big feelings. However, in part this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of opinion most visibly and harshly glimpsed at this time of year, about a month after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been coveting players, eulogising them, salivating over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, many of those same players are already being disdained as failures. Should we start to worry about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker wise? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that Sesko meets Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the Premier League and yet in their own state of feverish crisis, like filing a missing person’s report on someone who went to the store half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah past his prime. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. Arne Slot bald.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has started to replace football the actual game, to influence the way we view it, an entire sport repivoted around talking points and reaction, something that occurs in the background while we scroll through our phones, incapable to detach from the constant flow of takes and further hot takes. Perhaps this player bearing the brunt right now. But in a way, we're all sacrificing something here.