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Imagine this: a happy the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Now, place it with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Don't worry finding a real picture of that miss; background information is the enemy. Then, include statistics in a big, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Post it everywhere.

Will you mention that Højlund's goal count includes strikes in the premier European competition while his counterpart does not compete in Europe? Certainly not. Nor will you note that several of the Dane's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is much stronger to Slovenia and creates far more scoring opportunities. You run online for a large outlet, pure engagement is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and context is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of content spins. Your next task is to sift through a 44-minute podcast featuring the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "weird". Just before, where Schmeichel qualifies his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. Nobody needs that. Just ensure "strange" and "the player" appear together in the headline. The audience will be furious.

This Time of Potential and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has long been one of my preferred periods to observe football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are still fresh, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the coming months are staking their claims. The transfer window is shut. No one is mentioning the quadruple yet. All teams are still in the game. At this precise point, anything is possible.

Yet, for similar reasons, this period has also been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. Because although 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 best player in the league at this moment? We need an answer now.

The Player as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The need to delay definitive judgment, allowing layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to mature. And the demand to generate instant definitive judgment, a constant stream of takes and memes, context-free condemnations and pointless contrasts, a puzzle that can never truly be solved.

It is not my aim to offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's stint at United to date. The guy has started on four occasions in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and taken a mere of 116 touches. What exactly are we evaluating? And will I attempt to duplicate the pundits' notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits argue thrillingly on a podcast over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this year (Neville), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I loved watching him at Leipzig: a big, screeching racing car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: given the license to attack but also the leeway to miss. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most pitiless gulf between the time and air he needs, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

We saw a case of this over the international break, when a widely shared chart conveniently stated that the player had been deemed – decisively – the worst signing of the recent market by a poll of football representatives. Naturally, the press are by no means the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: all parties with a vested interest is now basically aligned along the same principles, an environment explicitly geared for provocation.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to us? Are we aware, on some 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 it all, aware on some surreal butterfly-effect level that each aspect about them is now basically material, product, open-source property to be repackaged and traded.

And yes, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that continues to feed the cycle, a major institution that must constantly be generating the strong emotions. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of opinion most visibly and cruelly glimpsed at this season, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. All summer long we have been coveting footballers, eulogising them, drooling over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, many of those same players are already being disdained as broken goods. Is it time to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that Sesko faces Liverpool on Sunday: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the league and yet in their own state of perceived turmoil, like filing a a report on someone who went to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. 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 narrative of football has started to replace football itself, to influence the way we view it, an whole competition reoriented around talking points and immediate responses, something that occurs in the background while we scroll through our devices, incapable to detach from the saline drip of takes and further hot takes. It may be this player taking the hit right now. However, we're all sacrificing something in this process.