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Picture this: a smiling the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Next, juxtapose it with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, looking as if he's missed a sitter. Don't worry locating a real picture of that miss; context is the enemy. Then, include statistics in a large, silly font. Don't forget the emojis. Share it across all platforms.

Will you mention that Højlund's goal count includes scores in the Champions League while Sesko does not compete in continental tournaments? Of course not. And would you note that four of Højlund's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and generates many more scoring opportunities. If you manage online for a large outlet, pure engagement is your livelihood, United are the biggest draw, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

So the cycle of online material spins. The next job is to sift through a 44-minute interview featuring the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where he qualifies his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. Nobody wants that. Just ensure "weird" and "the player" appear together in the headline. The audience will be furious.

This Time of Promise and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my favourite times to observe football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are still fresh, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the coming months are staking their claims. The transfer window is shut. Nobody is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are in contention. At this precise point, anything is possible.

However, for similar reasons, this period has long been one of my least favourite times to read about football. Because although no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is reborn. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league right now? We need an answer now.

The Player as Patient Zero

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player caught between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The need to withhold definitive judgment, to let layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to mature. And the imperative to generate permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, context-free criticisms and pointless comparisons, a square that can never truly be circled.

It is not my aim to offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's time at United to date. The guy has been in the lineup four times in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and taken a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly 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 of England's leading pundits duel passionately on a popular show over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this season (one pundit), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching Sesko at Leipzig: a powerful, fast sports car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: given the freedom to rampage but also the freedom to miss. 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 short advertisement, the club with the widest and most ruthless gulf between the patience and space he requires, and the time and air he is going to get.

There was a case of this during the international break, when a viral infographic conveniently informed us that the player had been deemed – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a poll of 20 agents. And of course, the press are not the only ones in this. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: all parties with skin in the game is now basically operating along the identical rules, an environment explicitly nosed towards provocation.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to ourselves? Are we aware, on any level, what this endless sluice of irritation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the middle of this, aware on some surreal butterfly-effect level that every single thing about players is now basically content, product, public property to be repackaged and exchanged.

And yes, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that continues to feed the narrative, a big club that must always be generating the big feelings. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, a swing of opinion most clearly and harshly glimpsed at this season, about a month after the window has closed. All summer long we have been coveting players, praising them, drooling over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are already being disdained as broken goods. Is it time to be concerned about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that Sesko meets Liverpool on the weekend: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at home in the league and somehow in their own situation of feverish crisis, like filing a missing person’s report on someone who popped to the shops half an hour ago. Too open. Their star past his prime. Alexander Isak waste of money. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has started to replace football itself, to inflect the way we view it, an whole competition repivoted around discussion topics and reaction, something that occurs in the background while we browse through our phones, incapable to disconnect from the saline drip of takes and more takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit right now. But in a way, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience here.