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Imagine the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Now, place that with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Don't worry finding an actual photo of him missing; context is the enemy. Then, add statistics in a big, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Post the image everywhere.

Will you point out that Højlund's tally includes scores in the premier European competition while Sesko does not compete in Europe? Certainly not. Nor will you highlight that several of Højlund's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and generates many more chances. If you run online for a major brand, raw engagement is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of online material spins. Your next task is to scan a lengthy podcast featuring Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he qualifies his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. Nobody wants that. Just ensure "strange" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. People will be outraged.

This Time of Potential and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my preferred periods to watch football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, 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 summer market is shut. No one is talking about the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are in contention. Right now, all is possibility.

Yet, for similar reasons, this period has long been one of my least favourite times to read about football. For while no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league right now? Please a decision immediately.

The Player as The Prime Example

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player caught between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The need to withhold definitive judgment, to let layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to mature. And the demand to produce permanent definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of opinions and memes, out-of-context condemnations and pointless contrasts, a puzzle that can never truly be circled.

It is not my aim to offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's stint at Manchester United so far. He has started on four occasions in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and had a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we evaluating? And will I attempt to replicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits duel thrillingly on a podcast over whether he needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this season (one pundit), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I loved watching him at Leipzig: a big, fast racing car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: afforded the freedom to rampage but also the leeway to miss. Partly this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in roughly the duration it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most pitiless gap between the time and air he requires, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

There was a case of this over the international break, when a widely shared chart handily stated that the player had been judged – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a poll of football representatives. Naturally, the media are by no means alone in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: all parties with skin in the game is now basically operating along the identical rules, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to ourselves? Are we aware, on some level, what this endless sluice of irritation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the middle of it all, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about them is now basically content, product, public property to be packaged and traded.

And yes, 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 big feelings. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, a swing of opinion most clearly and cruelly glimpsed at this season, about a month after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been coveting footballers, eulogising them, drooling over them. Yet, 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 necessary? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that Sesko meets Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the league and somehow in their own state of feverish crisis, like submitting a missing person’s report on a person who went to the shops 30 minutes ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah past his prime. The striker waste of money. Arne Slot 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 influence the way we watch it, an entire sport repivoted around discussion topics and reaction, an activity that occurs in the background while we browse through our devices, incapable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. Perhaps Sesko bearing the brunt right now. However, everyone is sacrificing something in this process.