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Imagine the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, place it with a dejected Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he's missed a sitter. Don't bother locating a real picture of that miss; context is your adversary. Now, add some goal stats in a large, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Post the image everywhere.

Would you point out that Højlund's tally features scores in the Champions League while Sesko does not compete in Europe? Certainly not. And will you highlight that several of Højlund's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is far superior to Slovenia and generates many more chances. You manage online for a major brand, pure engagement is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of content spins. Your next task is to sift through a lengthy interview with Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where Schmeichel prefaces his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. No one wants that. Simply make sure "weird" and "Sesko" appear together in the title. The audience will be outraged.

The Season of Promise and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has long been one of my favourite times to observe football. Leaves fall, winds shift, the teams and tactics are still fresh, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the coming months are staking their claims. The summer market is closed. Nobody is talking about the quadruple yet. All teams are still in the game. At this precise point, all is possibility.

However, for many of the same reasons, this period has long been one of my least favourite times to read about football. Because although no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is reborn. The German talent has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league right now? Please an answer immediately.

The Player as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The need to delay definitive judgment, to let layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to develop. And the imperative to generate permanent definitive judgment, a constant stream of opinions and memes, context-free condemnations and pointless contrasts, a puzzle that can not truly be solved.

It is not my aim to offer a substantive evaluation of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. The guy has been in the lineup four times in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and had a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely 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 argue thrillingly on a podcast over whether he needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this year (Neville), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching Sesko at Leipzig: a powerful, screeching sports car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: afforded 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 summarily issued in about the time it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most ruthless gap between the patience and space he needs, and the time and air he is going to get.

We saw an example of this over the national team pause, when a viral infographic handily stated that Sesko had been judged – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a survey of football representatives. And of course, the press are by no means alone in such behavior. Club channels, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially operating along the same principles, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to ourselves? Do we realize, on some level, what this endless stream of irritation is doing to our minds? Separate from the essential weirdness of playing in the center of this, knowing on some surreal butterfly-effect level that every single thing about players is now basically material, commodity, open-source property to be packaged and exchanged.

Indeed, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the entity 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 clearly and cruelly glimpsed at this time of year, about a month after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been desiring players, praising them, drooling over them. Now, only a handful of games later, many of those very players are already being disdained as broken goods. Is it time to worry about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker wise? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that Sesko faces their rivals on Sunday: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the league and somehow in their own state of feverish crisis, like filing a missing person’s report on a person who went to the shops 30 minutes ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah finished. The striker an expensive flop. The coach losing his hair.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has started to replace football itself, to influence the way we watch it, an whole competition repivoted around discussion topics and immediate responses, an activity that happens in the background while we browse through our devices, incapable to disconnect from the constant flow of opinions and further hot takes. Perhaps Sesko bearing the brunt right now. However, everyone is sacrificing something here.