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Picture the following: a smiling the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Now, juxtapose it with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed a sitter. Don't bother finding a real picture of him missing; background information is the enemy. Then, add some goal stats in a big, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Share the image across all platforms.

Would you point out that Højlund's goal count includes scores in the Champions League while Sesko does not compete in Europe? Certainly not. Nor would you note that four of Højlund's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that his national team is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and creates far more chances. If you run online for a major brand, pure interaction is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

Thus the cycle of content turns. Your next task is to sift through a lengthy interview featuring Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "weird". Just before, where Schmeichel qualifies his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. No one needs that. Simply make sure "strange" and "Sesko" appear together in the headline. People will be furious.

The Season 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 still fresh, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the coming months are planting their flags. The transfer window is shut. No one is talking about the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are in contention. Right now, all is possibility.

However, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. For while no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league at this moment? Please an answer now.

Sesko as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player caught between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to withhold definitive judgment, allowing technical development and tactical sophistication to develop. And the imperative to generate instant verdicts, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, context-free criticisms and pointless contrasts, a square that can not truly be circled.

I do not propose to offer a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's time at Manchester United so far. The guy has been in the lineup on four occasions in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and taken a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we analysing? And do I propose to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts argue thrillingly on a popular show over whether he needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this season (one pundit), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at Leipzig: a big, fast racing car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: afforded the freedom to attack but also the leeway to miss. Partly this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in about the time it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most pitiless gap between the patience and space he needs, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

There was an example of this during the international break, when a viral infographic handily stated that Sesko had been deemed – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a survey of 20 agents. Naturally, the media are by no means alone in this. Club channels, influencers, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: everybody with a vested interest is now basically aligned along the identical rules, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to ourselves? Are we aware, on any level, what this infinite sluice of aggravation is doing to our minds? Separate from the essential weirdness of being a player in the center of it all, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about them is now basically content, commodity, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, in part 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. However, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of judgment most visibly and cruelly glimpsed at this time of year, about a month after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been coveting players, eulogising them, drooling over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, many of those same players are now being disdained as failures. Is it time to be concerned about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker necessary? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that he meets Liverpool on Sunday: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the Premier League and somehow in their own state of perceived turmoil, like submitting a a report on a person who went to the store 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Their star finished. The striker waste of money. The coach losing his hair.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has started to replace football itself, to influence the way we view it, an entire sport reoriented around discussion topics and immediate responses, an activity that happens in the background while we scroll through our devices, incapable to disconnect from the constant flow of takes and further hot takes. It may be this player taking the hit at present. But in a way, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience here.