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Imagine the following: a smiling the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Now, juxtapose it with a dejected the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Don't bother locating a real picture of that miss; background information is the enemy. Then, include some goal stats in a big, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Post the image everywhere.

Will you point out that Højlund's tally includes strikes in the Champions League while his counterpart isn't playing in Europe? Of course not. Nor would you highlight that several of Højlund's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and generates far more chances. You manage social media for a major brand, raw interaction is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

Thus the cycle of content spins. Your next task is to sift through a 44-minute podcast with Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "weird". Just before, where Schmeichel qualifies his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. Nobody wants that. Just make sure "strange" and "Sesko" are paired in the headline. The audience will be furious.

The Season of Potential and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my favourite times to observe football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, squads and strategies are newly formed, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the season ahead are staking their claims. The transfer window is closed. No one is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are in contention. At this precise point, all is possibility.

Yet, for similar reasons, this period has also been one of my most disliked times to read about football. Because although no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is reborn. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league right now? Please an answer now.

Sesko as The Prime Example

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player caught between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to delay definitive judgment, allowing layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to generate permanent verdicts, a constant stream of takes and jokes, context-free condemnations and pointless comparisons, a square that can never truly be circled.

I do not propose to provide a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. He has started on four occasions in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and taken a mere of 116 touches. What precisely are we analysing? Nor do I propose to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits argue thrillingly on a podcast over whether he needs ten strikes to be a success this season (Neville), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I loved watching Sesko at Leipzig: a big, screeching racing car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: afforded the freedom to rampage but also the freedom 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 roughly the duration it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most pitiless gap between the time and air he requires, and the time and air he is going to get.

There was an example of this over the international break, when a widely shared infographic conveniently informed us that the player had been judged – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a survey of football representatives. And of course, the press are not alone in such behavior. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of fake followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially aligned along the identical rules, an environment explicitly geared for provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to us? Do we realize, on any level, what this endless sluice of irritation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of playing in the middle of this, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about them is now basically content, product, open-source property to be packaged and exchanged.

Indeed, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that continues to feed the cycle, a big club that must always be generating the big feelings. But also, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of opinion most clearly and cruelly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. All summer long we have been coveting players, praising them, drooling over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are now being disdained as broken goods. Is it time to worry about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need their striker necessary? What was the point of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that he meets their rivals on Sunday: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the league and yet in their own state of feverish crisis, like filing a missing person’s report on a person who went to the shops half an hour ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah past his prime. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. The coach losing his hair.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to inflect the way we watch it, an entire sport repivoted around talking points and reaction, something that occurs in the backdrop while we scroll through our devices, unable to detach from the saline drip of opinions and further hot takes. It may be this player bearing the brunt at present. However, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.