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Picture the following: a happy Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Next, place it with a dejected the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Do not bother locating a real picture of him missing; background information is your adversary. Then, add statistics in a big, silly font. Remember the emojis. Share it everywhere.

Will you mention that Højlund's tally features strikes in the Champions League while Sesko isn't playing in Europe? Of course not. And would you highlight that several of Højlund's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is much stronger to Slovenia and generates many more scoring opportunities. If you manage social media for a major brand, pure engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

So the cycle of content turns. The next job is to scan a 44-minute podcast featuring Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". Just before, where he prefaces his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. Nobody needs that. Simply ensure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. The audience will be furious.

This Time of Promise and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my preferred periods to watch 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 planting their flags. The transfer window is closed. No one is talking about the quadruple yet. Everyone are still in the game. Right now, anything is possible.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, this period has long been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. For while nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league at this moment? Please a decision now.

The Player as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player caught between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to withhold definitive judgment, allowing technical development and tactical sophistication to develop. And the imperative to generate instant definitive judgment, a constant stream of takes and jokes, context-free condemnations and meaningless contrasts, a square that can never truly be circled.

I do not propose to provide a substantive evaluation of Sesko's time at United to date. The guy has started on four occasions in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and taken a grand total of 116 touches. What exactly are we evaluating? Nor will I attempt to duplicate the pundits' notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits argue passionately on a podcast over whether he needs ten strikes to be deemed successful 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 powerful, fast sports car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: afforded the freedom to rampage but also the leeway to fail. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving 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 ruthless gap between the patience and space he needs, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

There was a case of this during the international break, when a widely shared infographic conveniently informed us that the player had been deemed – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a survey of 20 agents. Naturally, the media are by no means the only ones in this. Club channels, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: everybody with a vested interest is now essentially aligned along the same principles, an environment deliberately geared for controversy.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this endless sluice of aggravation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of playing in the middle of it all, knowing on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that each aspect about players is now basically material, commodity, public property to be packaged and traded.

And yes, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that continues to feed the narrative, a big club that must always be producing the big feelings. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of judgment most visibly and cruelly observed at this time of year, about a month after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been coveting players, eulogising them, drooling over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, many of those very players are already being dismissed as failures. Should we start to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that Sesko meets their rivals on the weekend: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at home in the league and somehow in their own state of feverish crisis, like filing a a report on someone who popped to the shops 30 minutes ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah finished. The striker waste of money. The coach bald.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has started to replace football itself, to influence the way we view it, an entire sport repivoted around talking points and immediate responses, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we browse through our devices, incapable to disconnect from the constant flow of takes and more takes. Perhaps Sesko bearing the brunt right now. However, everyone is losing a part of the experience here.