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Imagine this: a smiling Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Now, place that with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he's missed an open goal. Do not worry finding an actual photo of that miss; context is your adversary. Now, include some goal stats in a big, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Post the image everywhere.

Will you mention that Højlund's tally includes strikes in the Champions League while his counterpart isn't playing in continental tournaments? Of course not. And will you note that several of the Dane's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and generates many more chances. If you run social media for a major brand, raw interaction is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

So the wheel of content spins. The next job is to scan a 44-minute podcast featuring Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "strange". Just before, where Schmeichel qualifies his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. No one wants that. Simply ensure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. People will be furious.

The Season of Potential and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has long been one of my favourite periods to observe football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, squads and strategies are still fresh, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the coming months are staking their claims. The transfer window is shut. Nobody is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are in contention. At this precise point, anything is possible.

However, for similar reasons, this period 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. The City winger is resurgent. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? Please a decision now.

Sesko as Patient Zero

In many ways, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The need to delay definitive judgment, allowing technical development and tactical sophistication to mature. And the imperative to produce permanent definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, out-of-context condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a puzzle that can never truly be circled.

I do not propose to provide a substantive evaluation of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. The guy has started four times in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and had a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we analysing? And will I attempt to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts duel passionately on a popular show over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this season (one pundit), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I enjoyed watching him at his former club: a big, screeching racing car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: given the freedom to rampage but also the freedom to fail. And in part this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most pitiless gulf between the patience and space he needs, and the opportunity he is going to get.

There was a case of this during the international break, when a viral chart handily stated that the player had been judged – decisively – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a survey of 20 agents. And of course, the press are not the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: all parties with skin in the game is now essentially aligned along the identical rules, an ecosystem deliberately geared for controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite sluice of aggravation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of being a player in the middle of this, knowing on a bizarre chain-reaction level that every single thing about players is now essentially content, commodity, open-source property to be repackaged and traded.

And yes, partly this is because United are United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the cycle, a big club that must always be producing the strong emotions. But also, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of opinion most clearly and harshly observed at this season, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been desiring players, eulogising them, salivating over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are already being dismissed as broken goods. Is it time to be concerned about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that he meets their rivals on the weekend: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier 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. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah finished. The striker waste of money. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has started to replace football the actual game, to influence the way we view it, an entire sport repivoted around discussion topics and immediate responses, an activity that occurs in the background while we scroll through our devices, incapable to detach from the constant flow of opinions and further hot takes. Perhaps this player bearing the brunt right now. However, everyone is losing a part of the experience here.