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Picture this: a happy the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Now, place it with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, appearing like he's missed a sitter. Don't bother locating an actual photo of that miss; context is the enemy. Now, include some goal stats in a large, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Share the image everywhere.

Will you mention that Højlund's goal count features strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in Europe? 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 online for a major brand, pure interaction is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and context is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of content turns. Your next task is to scan a 44-minute interview featuring the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where Schmeichel prefaces his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. Nobody needs that. Simply ensure "strange" and "the player" are paired in the title. The audience will be outraged.

This Time of Promise and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my preferred times to watch football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, squads and strategies are newly formed, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the season ahead are staking their claims. The transfer window is closed. No one is talking about the quadruple yet. All teams are in contention. At this precise point, all is possibility.

However, for similar 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. The City winger is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? We need a decision now.

Sesko as Patient Zero

In many ways, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player caught between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to delay final conclusions, to let layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to develop. And the imperative to generate instant definitive judgment, a constant stream of takes and memes, context-free criticisms and pointless comparisons, a square that can never truly be solved.

I do not propose to provide a in-depth 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, scored two goals, and taken a grand total of 116 touches. What precisely are we evaluating? Nor will I attempt to replicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits duel thrillingly on a popular show over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be a success this season (one pundit), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I loved watching him at his former club: a big, fast sports car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: afforded the freedom to attack but also the leeway to fail. And in part this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most ruthless gap between the time and air he requires, and the opportunity he is going to get.

There was an example of this during the international break, when a viral chart handily stated that Sesko had been deemed – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a poll of football representatives. And of course, the press are not alone in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially operating along the identical rules, an environment explicitly geared for controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to ourselves? Are we aware, on some level, what this endless sluice of irritation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of playing in the middle of it all, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that every single thing about players is now basically material, product, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

Indeed, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that continues to feed the narrative, a big club that must constantly be producing the strong emotions. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of judgment most visibly and harshly observed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been desiring players, eulogising them, drooling over them. Now, only a handful of games later, many of those same players are already being disdained as broken goods. Should we start to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that Sesko meets Liverpool on Sunday: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and yet in their own state of feverish crisis, like filing a missing person’s report on a person who went to the store 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah past his prime. The striker an expensive flop. Arne Slot bald.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has started to replace football the actual game, to inflect the way we view it, an entire sport reoriented around talking points and immediate responses, an activity that happens in the background while we browse through our devices, incapable to detach from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit right now. However, we're all losing a part of the experience here.