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Imagine the following: a happy the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Next, place that with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, appearing like he's missed a sitter. Don't worry locating an actual photo of that miss; background information is the enemy. Then, add some goal stats in a large, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Post the image everywhere.

Would you mention that Højlund's tally includes scores in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. And would you note that several of the Dane's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is far superior to Slovenia and creates many more chances. You run social media for a large outlet, raw engagement is what pays the bills, 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 44-minute interview with Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". Just before, where Schmeichel qualifies his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. Nobody needs that. Simply make sure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. The audience will be furious.

The Season of Promise and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my preferred times to observe football. Leaves fall, winds shift, squads and strategies are newly formed, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the season ahead are planting their flags. The summer market is closed. Nobody is mentioning the quadruple yet. Everyone are in contention. Right now, anything is possible.

However, 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, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league right now? We need an answer now.

Sesko as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player caught between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to withhold definitive judgment, to let technical development and tactical sophistication to develop. And the imperative to generate instant verdicts, a constant stream of takes and memes, out-of-context criticisms and meaningless contrasts, a puzzle that can not truly be solved.

I do not propose to provide a substantive analysis of Sesko's stint at United to date. He has started on four occasions in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and had a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we evaluating? And do I propose to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel passionately on a popular show over whether he needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this season (Neville), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at Leipzig: a powerful, screeching racing car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: given the freedom to attack but also the leeway to fail. And in part this is why United feels like the most unforgiving 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 widest and most ruthless gap between the time and air he requires, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

We saw a case of this during the international break, 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 survey of 20 agents. And of course, the media are by no means the only ones in this. 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 operating along the identical rules, an ecosystem deliberately geared for provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? Are we aware, on any level, what this endless sluice of irritation is doing to our minds? Separate from the essential weirdness of being a player in the center of it all, knowing on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about players is now basically content, commodity, public property to be repackaged and exchanged.

And yes, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that continues to feed the narrative, a major institution that must always be generating the big feelings. But also, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of opinion most clearly and harshly observed at this time of year, about a month after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been coveting players, praising them, drooling over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, a lot of those very players are now being dismissed as failures. Should we start to worry about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker necessary? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that Sesko meets Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the Premier League and somehow in their own state of perceived turmoil, like submitting a a report on a person who went to the shops half an hour ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah past his prime. Alexander Isak waste of money. Arne Slot bald.

Perhaps 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 whole competition reoriented around discussion topics and reaction, something that happens in the backdrop while we scroll through our phones, incapable to disconnect from the constant flow of opinions and further hot takes. It may be this player taking the hit at present. But in a way, everyone is losing something here.