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Imagine the following: a happy Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Now, place that with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Don't bother locating a real picture of him missing; context is your adversary. Now, add some goal stats in a large, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Post it across all platforms.

Will you point out that Højlund's goal count features scores in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. And will you highlight that several of the Dane's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that Denmark is much stronger to Slovenia and creates far more scoring opportunities. If you manage social media for a major brand, pure interaction is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

So the cycle of content turns. Your next task is to scan a lengthy interview with the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "weird". Just before, where he prefaces his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. No one needs that. Just ensure "weird" and "Sesko" appear together in the headline. People will be outraged.

The Season of Promise and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has long been one of my favourite periods to observe football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are still fresh, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the coming months are planting their flags. The transfer window is shut. No one is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. All teams are in contention. Right now, anything is possible.

However, for many of the same reasons, this period has long been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. Because although no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league right now? We need an answer now.

The Player as Patient Zero

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to delay definitive judgment, to let layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to mature. And the demand to produce instant definitive judgment, a constant stream of takes and memes, context-free criticisms and pointless comparisons, a square that can not truly be circled.

It is not my aim to offer a substantive evaluation of Sesko's stint at Manchester United so far. The guy has been in the lineup four times in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and taken a mere of 116 touches. What exactly are we evaluating? Nor do I propose to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits duel thrillingly on a popular show over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be a success this year (Neville), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching him at Leipzig: a big, screeching sports car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: given the license to rampage but also the leeway to fail. Partly this is why Manchester 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 load a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most pitiless gap between the patience and space he requires, and the opportunity he is going to get.

There was an example of this during the international break, when a widely shared chart conveniently informed us that Sesko had been deemed – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the press are not the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with a vested interest is now essentially aligned along the identical rules, an ecosystem explicitly geared for controversy.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to ourselves? Are we aware, on some level, what this endless stream of irritation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the center of it all, knowing on some surreal butterfly-effect level that each aspect about players is now essentially material, commodity, public property to be repackaged and exchanged.

Indeed, partly this is because United are United, the corpse that continues to feed the narrative, a big club that must constantly be producing the strong emotions. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of judgment most clearly and cruelly observed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been coveting footballers, praising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are now being disdained as failures. Is it time to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need their striker wise? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that he meets Liverpool on Sunday: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and yet in their own state of feverish crisis, like submitting a missing person’s report on someone who popped to the shops 30 minutes ago. Too open. Their star finished. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. The coach losing his hair.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has started to replace football the actual game, to influence the way we view it, an whole competition repivoted around talking points and immediate responses, something that happens in the backdrop while we browse through our devices, unable to disconnect from the saline drip of takes and more takes. Perhaps this player taking the hit at present. However, everyone is losing a part of the experience here.