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Picture this: a smiling the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Next, place it with a dejected the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed a sitter. Do not worry finding a real picture of that miss; context is the enemy. Then, add statistics in a large, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Post the image across all platforms.

Would you mention that Højlund's goal count includes scores in the premier European competition while Sesko does not compete in Europe? Certainly not. Nor would you highlight that several of the Dane's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and generates far more chances. You manage online for a major brand, pure engagement is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the prime target, and context is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of content turns. The next job is to scan a lengthy podcast featuring Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "strange". 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. Simply ensure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. People will be outraged.

The Season of Potential and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has long been one of my preferred times to observe football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, squads and strategies are newly formed, all is novel 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 mentioning the quadruple yet. All teams are in contention. Right now, all is possibility.

However, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my least favourite times to read about football. For while no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is reborn. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league right now? We need a decision now.

The Player as Patient Zero

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The need to withhold final conclusions, to let technical development and strategic understanding to mature. And the imperative to produce instant verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, context-free condemnations and pointless contrasts, a square that can not truly be solved.

I do not propose to offer a substantive evaluation of Sesko's time at United to date. The guy has started on four occasions in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and had a mere of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? Nor will I attempt to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel thrillingly on a popular show over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be a success this year (one pundit), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I enjoyed watching him at Leipzig: a powerful, screeching sports car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: afforded the license to attack but also the leeway to fail. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most ruthless gulf between the time and air he requires, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

We saw an example of this during the national team pause, when a viral infographic conveniently stated that the player had been deemed – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a survey of football representatives. And of course, the press are not alone in such behavior. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with skin in the game is now basically aligned along the identical rules, an environment deliberately geared for provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to ourselves? Do we realize, on some level, what this endless sluice of aggravation is doing to our brains? Separate from the essential weirdness of being a player in the center of this, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that every single thing about them is now basically content, commodity, public property to be packaged and exchanged.

And yes, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that continues to feed the cycle, a big club that must constantly be generating the strong emotions. However, partly this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of opinion most visibly and cruelly observed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been coveting footballers, eulogising them, drooling over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, a lot of those very players are now being dismissed as broken goods. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that he meets Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the league and yet in their own situation of feverish crisis, like filing a a report on a person who popped to the store 30 minutes ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah past his prime. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. The coach losing his hair.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has started to replace football the actual game, to inflect the way we view it, an whole competition repivoted around talking points and immediate responses, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we scroll through our phones, incapable to detach from the saline drip of opinions and further hot takes. Perhaps Sesko taking the hit right now. But in a way, we're all sacrificing something here.