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Picture the following: a smiling the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Next, place it with a dejected Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, looking as if he's missed a sitter. Don't worry finding an actual photo of him missing; background information is your adversary. Now, add statistics in a large, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Share it everywhere.

Will you point out that Højlund's tally features strikes in the Champions League while his counterpart isn't playing in Europe? Of course not. And would you highlight that four of Højlund's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and creates far more scoring opportunities. You manage online for a large outlet, raw interaction is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

So the cycle of content spins. The next job 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 Schmeichel prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. No one wants that. Simply make sure "weird" and "the player" are paired in the headline. People will be outraged.

The Season of Potential and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has long been one of my preferred periods to observe football. Leaves fall, winds shift, squads and strategies are still fresh, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the season ahead are staking their claims. The transfer window is closed. Nobody 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. For while no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is reborn. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league right now? We need a decision now.

The Player as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player caught between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to delay final conclusions, allowing technical development and strategic understanding to mature. And the demand 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 circled.

I do not propose to provide a in-depth analysis of Sesko's stint at United so far. He has been in the lineup on four occasions in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and had a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we evaluating? Nor will I attempt to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts argue thrillingly on a popular show over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this season (Neville), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I loved watching Sesko at Leipzig: a big, screeching racing car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: given the license to rampage but also the leeway to fail. And in part this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most pitiless gulf between the patience and space he requires, and the opportunity he is going to get.

There was an example of this over the international break, when a widely shared infographic conveniently stated that Sesko had been judged – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a poll of football representatives. And of course, the media are not alone in this. Team social media, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of fake followers: everybody with a vested interest is now essentially aligned along the identical rules, an environment deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to us? Do we realize, on some level, what this infinite stream of irritation is doing to our brains? Separate from the essential weirdness of playing in the middle of it all, knowing on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about players is now basically content, commodity, public property to be packaged and traded.

And yes, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a major institution that must constantly be producing the big feelings. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of opinion most clearly and cruelly glimpsed at this season, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. All summer long we have been desiring players, praising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are already being disdained as broken goods. Is it time to worry about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker wise? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that Sesko faces their rivals on the weekend: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at home in the Premier League and somehow in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like filing a a report on someone who popped to the store 30 minutes ago. Too open. Their star finished. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football itself, to influence the way we view it, an entire sport reoriented around discussion topics and immediate responses, an activity that happens in the background while we browse through our devices, incapable to detach from the saline drip of takes and further hot takes. Perhaps Sesko taking the hit at present. But in a way, we're all sacrificing something here.