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Imagine this: a smiling Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Now, place that with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed a sitter. Don't worry locating an actual photo of that miss; context is your adversary. Now, include some goal stats in a big, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Share the image everywhere.

Would you mention that Højlund's goal count features scores in the premier European competition while his counterpart does not compete in Europe? Certainly not. Nor will you note that several of Højlund's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and generates many more scoring opportunities. You run online for a major brand, pure engagement is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the prime target, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the cycle of online material turns. Your next task is to scan a lengthy interview featuring Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where he qualifies his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. No one needs that. Just make sure "weird" and "the player" are paired in the title. The audience will be furious.

This Time of Potential and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has long been one of my favourite times to observe football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, the teams and tactics are newly formed, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the coming months are planting their flags. The summer market is shut. Nobody is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are still in the game. Right now, anything is possible.

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, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is reborn. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league at this moment? Please a decision now.

Sesko as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The need to delay definitive judgment, allowing layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to mature. And the demand to produce instant definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of opinions and memes, context-free criticisms and pointless contrasts, a square that can never truly be solved.

I do not propose to provide a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's time 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 analysing? And will I attempt to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts duel passionately on a popular show over whether he needs ten strikes to be a success this year (one pundit), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I enjoyed watching him at his former club: a powerful, 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 fail. Partly this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most pitiless gulf between the time and air he needs, and the opportunity he is going to get.

There was an example of this during the national team pause, when a viral infographic conveniently stated that Sesko had been judged – decisively – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a survey of football representatives. Naturally, the press are by no means alone in this. Team social media, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: all parties with skin in the game is now basically aligned along the identical rules, an ecosystem explicitly geared for provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite stream of aggravation is doing to our brains? Separate from the essential weirdness of playing in the center of it all, aware 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.

Indeed, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that continues to feed the cycle, a big club that must constantly be producing the big feelings. But also, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of judgment most clearly and harshly observed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been coveting footballers, praising them, drooling over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, many of those same players are already being disdained as failures. Is it time to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that he meets their rivals on the weekend: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at home in the league and somehow in their own state of perceived turmoil, like filing a a report on a person who popped to the shops half an hour ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah finished. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. Arne Slot bald.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has started to replace football itself, to influence the way we view it, an whole competition repivoted around talking points and immediate responses, an activity that happens in the background while we scroll through our devices, incapable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. Perhaps this player bearing the brunt right now. However, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.