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Picture the following: a happy Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Next, juxtapose it with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed a sitter. Do not worry locating a real picture of that miss; background information is your adversary. Now, add statistics in a large, comical font. Remember the emojis. Post the image everywhere.

Will you point out that Højlund's tally includes strikes in the Champions League while his counterpart does not compete in Europe? Of course not. And would you note that several of the Dane's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is much stronger to Slovenia and generates many more chances. You run social media for a major brand, raw interaction is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

So the wheel of online material spins. The next job is to sift through a lengthy interview featuring Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where Schmeichel qualifies his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. No one needs that. Simply make sure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. People will be furious.

The Season of Potential and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my favourite periods to observe football. Leaves fall, winds shift, the teams and tactics are still fresh, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the coming months are planting their flags. The summer market is closed. No one is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. All teams are in contention. Right now, all is possibility.

Yet, for similar reasons, this period has also been one of my least favourite times to read about football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league right now? Please a decision now.

The Player as The Prime Example

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The need to withhold definitive judgment, allowing layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to produce permanent verdicts, a constant stream of takes and memes, out-of-context condemnations and meaningless contrasts, a puzzle that can not truly be circled.

I do not propose to offer a substantive evaluation of Sesko's time at United to date. The guy has been in the lineup on four occasions in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and taken a grand total of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? And do I propose to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel thrillingly on a podcast over whether he needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this year (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I loved watching him at his former club: a powerful, fast racing car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: given the freedom to rampage but also the leeway to miss. And in part this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most pitiless gap between the patience and space he requires, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

There was a case of this during the international break, when a widely shared chart conveniently informed us that Sesko had been judged – decisively – the worst signing of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the media are not alone in this. Team social media, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of fake followers: all parties with a vested interest is now basically aligned along the same principles, an ecosystem explicitly geared for controversy.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to us? Do we realize, on any level, what this infinite stream of irritation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of playing in the middle of it all, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about them is now essentially content, product, open-source property to be repackaged and traded.

Indeed, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that continues to feed the cycle, a big club that must always be producing the big feelings. However, in part this is a temporary malaise, a swing of opinion most visibly and harshly observed at this season, about a month after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been coveting footballers, praising them, salivating over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, a lot of those very players are now being dismissed as broken goods. Is it time to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need their striker wise? What was the point of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that Sesko meets their rivals on Sunday: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the league and yet in their own state of perceived turmoil, like submitting a a report on a person who went to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah past his prime. The striker waste of money. The coach losing his hair.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football itself, to influence the way we watch it, an entire sport repivoted around talking points and reaction, something that occurs in the background while we browse through our phones, incapable to detach from the constant flow of takes and more takes. It may be this player taking the hit right now. However, we're all sacrificing something in this process.