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Picture the following: a happy the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Next, juxtapose that with a dejected the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Do not worry locating a real picture of him missing; context is your adversary. Then, add statistics in a large, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Post the image everywhere.

Would you point out that Højlund's tally includes strikes in the premier European competition while his counterpart isn't playing in Europe? Of course not. And will you note that several of Højlund's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and creates many more scoring opportunities. If you manage social media for a major brand, raw interaction is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

So the cycle of content spins. Your next task is to scan a lengthy interview featuring the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "weird". Just before, where he prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. Nobody wants that. Simply make sure "strange" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. People will be furious.

This Time of Promise and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my preferred times to observe football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, the teams and tactics are newly formed, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the coming months are staking their claims. The summer market is closed. No one is mentioning the quadruple yet. All teams are still in the game. Right now, anything is possible.

Yet, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league right now? We need an answer now.

The Player as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player caught between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The need to delay final conclusions, to let layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to mature. And the imperative to produce instant verdicts, a constant stream of opinions and memes, out-of-context condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a square that can never truly be circled.

I do not propose to provide a substantive evaluation of Sesko's time at Manchester United to date. He has started four times in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and taken a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we analysing? Nor will I attempt to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits duel passionately on a popular show over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be a success this year (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching him at Leipzig: a powerful, fast racing car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: given the license to rampage but also the leeway to miss. And in part this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in about the time it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most ruthless gulf between the patience and space he needs, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

We saw an example of this over the national team pause, when a widely shared chart conveniently stated that the player had been judged – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a survey of football representatives. And of course, the press are by no means the only ones in such behavior. Club channels, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with skin in the game is now basically operating along the identical rules, an environment deliberately geared for controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to ourselves? Are we aware, on some level, what this endless stream of aggravation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of playing in the center of it all, knowing on some surreal chain-reaction level that every single thing about them is now basically material, commodity, public property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, partly this is because United are United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a major institution that must constantly be producing the strong emotions. However, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of judgment most visibly and cruelly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been coveting footballers, eulogising them, drooling over them. Now, only a handful of games later, many of those same players are now being dismissed as broken goods. Should we start to worry about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the point of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that he meets their rivals on Sunday: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the Premier League and somehow in their own state of perceived turmoil, like filing a missing person’s report on a person who popped to the store half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah finished. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. Arne Slot bald.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to influence the way we view it, an whole competition reoriented around discussion topics and immediate responses, something that happens in the backdrop while we browse through our devices, incapable to disconnect from the saline drip of takes and more takes. Perhaps this player taking the hit at present. But in a way, we're all sacrificing something here.