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Picture this: a smiling the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Now, place that with a dejected Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, looking as if he's missed an open goal. Do not worry finding an actual photo of him missing; background information is your adversary. Then, add statistics in a large, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Post the image everywhere.

Would you mention that Højlund's tally includes strikes in the Champions League while Sesko does not compete in continental tournaments? Certainly not. And would you note that four of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and generates far more chances. You manage online for a large outlet, pure interaction is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

So the wheel of online material spins. The next job is to sift through a 44-minute podcast with the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where he qualifies his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. No one needs that. Simply ensure "weird" and "Sesko" appear together in the headline. The audience will be outraged.

The Season of Promise and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my favourite times to watch football. Leaves fall, winds shift, the teams and tactics are newly formed, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the coming months are planting their flags. The transfer window is closed. No one is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are still in the game. Right now, anything is possible.

Yet, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. Because although no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is resurgent. The German talent has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league at this moment? Please an answer now.

The Player as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player caught between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The need to withhold final conclusions, allowing technical development and tactical sophistication to mature. And the imperative to produce permanent verdicts, a constant stream of takes and memes, out-of-context criticisms and meaningless contrasts, a puzzle that can not truly be circled.

I do not propose to offer a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's time at United to date. He has been in the lineup four times in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and taken a mere of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? Nor do I propose to replicate the pundits' notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits duel passionately on a popular show over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be a success this year (Neville), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching him at his former club: a powerful, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: given the freedom to attack but also the leeway to miss. And in part this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in roughly the duration it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most pitiless gap between the patience and space he requires, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

There was an example of this over the national team pause, when a widely shared infographic conveniently stated that the player had been deemed – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a poll of football representatives. And of course, 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 fake followers: all parties with skin in the game is now essentially aligned along the identical rules, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to ourselves? Do we realize, 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, aware on some surreal butterfly-effect level that every single thing about players is now basically material, product, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

Indeed, in part this is because United are United, the corpse that continues to feed the narrative, a major institution that must constantly be producing the strong emotions. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of judgment most visibly and harshly observed at this time of year, about a month after the window has closed. All summer long we have been coveting players, eulogising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those same players are now being dismissed as broken goods. Should we start to worry about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need their striker necessary? What was the point of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that Sesko meets their rivals on the weekend: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at home in the league and somehow in their own state of perceived turmoil, like submitting a missing person’s report on someone who went to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah past his prime. Alexander Isak waste of money. The coach losing his hair.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has started to replace football the actual game, to inflect the way we watch it, an entire sport reoriented around discussion topics and reaction, something that happens in the background while we scroll through our phones, incapable to detach from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. Perhaps Sesko taking the hit at present. But in a way, everyone is sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.