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Imagine this: a smiling Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, juxtapose it with a dejected the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he's missed an open goal. Do not bother locating an actual photo of him missing; context is the enemy. Now, add statistics in a big, comical font. Don't forget some emoticons. Post the image everywhere.

Will you mention that Højlund's goal count features strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in continental tournaments? Of course not. And will you note that several of Højlund's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and creates many more scoring opportunities. You run online for a large outlet, pure engagement is your livelihood, United are the biggest draw, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the cycle of content spins. Your next task is to sift through a lengthy podcast with the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "strange". Just before, where he prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. Nobody needs that. Just make sure "strange" and "the player" are paired in the title. The audience will be outraged.

The Season of Potential and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my favourite periods to observe football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, squads and strategies are still fresh, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the coming months are planting their flags. The transfer window is shut. No one is talking about the quadruple yet. All teams are still in the game. At this precise point, anything is possible.

Yet, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my most disliked times to read about football. For while nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. The City winger 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 immediately.

The Player as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player caught between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to delay definitive judgment, allowing layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to develop. And the imperative to generate permanent definitive judgment, a constant stream of opinions and memes, out-of-context criticisms and pointless contrasts, a square that can not truly be circled.

It is not my aim to provide a substantive evaluation of Sesko's time at Manchester United to date. The guy has been in the lineup four times in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and taken a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we evaluating? And do I propose to replicate the pundits' notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits duel passionately on a popular show over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be a success this season (Neville), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I enjoyed watching Sesko at Leipzig: a powerful, fast sports car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: afforded the freedom to rampage but also the leeway to fail. And in part this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving 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 gap between the patience and space he requires, and the time and air he is going to get.

We saw a case of this over the national team pause, when a viral infographic handily stated that Sesko had been judged – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a poll of football representatives. And of course, the press are not the only ones in such behavior. Club channels, influencers, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: everybody with a vested interest is now essentially operating along the same principles, an ecosystem deliberately nosed towards provocation.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to ourselves? Are we aware, on any level, what this endless stream of aggravation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of playing in the center of this, knowing on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that each aspect about players is now basically material, commodity, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, in part this is because United are United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the cycle, a major institution that must constantly be producing the strong emotions. However, in part this is a temporary malaise, a swing of judgment most visibly and cruelly glimpsed at this season, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been desiring players, praising them, salivating over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, many of those very players are now being dismissed as broken goods. Is it time to worry about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that Sesko meets Liverpool on Sunday: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at home in the Premier League and yet in their own situation of feverish crisis, like submitting a a report on someone who went to the store half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah past his prime. The striker an expensive flop. The coach bald.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football itself, to influence the way we watch it, an entire sport reoriented around talking points and reaction, an activity that happens in the background while we scroll through our devices, unable to disconnect from the saline drip of takes and more takes. Perhaps Sesko taking the hit at present. But in a way, everyone is losing a part of the experience here.