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Picture the following: a smiling the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Next, place that with a dejected Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed a sitter. Do not bother finding a real picture of him missing; background information is your adversary. Now, add some goal stats in a big, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Share the image across all platforms.

Would you mention that Højlund's tally includes scores in the premier European competition while his counterpart does not compete in continental tournaments? Of course not. Nor would you note that four of Højlund's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is much stronger to Slovenia and generates far more scoring opportunities. You run social media for a major brand, pure interaction is your livelihood, Manchester United are the prime target, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the cycle of content spins. The next job is to scan a 44-minute podcast with the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he prefaces his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. No one needs that. Simply ensure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. People will be outraged.

This Time of Potential and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my preferred times to watch football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, squads and strategies are newly formed, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the coming months are planting their flags. The transfer window is shut. Nobody is talking about the quadruple yet. All teams are still in the game. Right now, anything is possible.

However, for similar reasons, this period has long been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. Because although 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 at this moment? Please an answer now.

The Player as Patient Zero

In many ways, Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The need to delay final conclusions, allowing layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to mature. And the demand to generate permanent definitive judgment, a constant stream of opinions and jokes, out-of-context condemnations and pointless comparisons, a square that can not truly be solved.

It is not my aim to offer a in-depth analysis of Sesko's stint at Manchester United so far. The guy has started on four occasions in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and had a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we evaluating? Nor will I attempt to duplicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits argue thrillingly on a popular show over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this year (Neville), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I loved watching Sesko at his former club: a big, fast racing car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: given the freedom to attack but also the leeway to miss. And in part this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in roughly the duration it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most pitiless gulf between the time and air he needs, and the opportunity he is going to get.

There was an example of this during the national team pause, when a viral chart conveniently stated that the player had been deemed – decisively – the worst signing of the recent market by a survey of 20 agents. And of course, the press are by no means the only ones in this. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially aligned along the same principles, an ecosystem deliberately geared for provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to ourselves? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite stream of aggravation is doing to our minds? Separate from the essential weirdness of being a player in the middle of this, aware on some surreal chain-reaction level that every single thing about players is now essentially content, commodity, public property to be packaged and exchanged.

Indeed, in part this is because United are United, the corpse that continues to feed the cycle, a major institution that must always be generating the big feelings. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of opinion most clearly and harshly glimpsed at this time of year, about a month after the window has closed. All summer long we have been coveting players, praising them, salivating over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, a lot of those same players are already being dismissed as broken goods. Is it time to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need their striker wise? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that Sesko meets Liverpool on the weekend: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and yet in their own situation of feverish crisis, like filing a a report on a person who popped to the store 30 minutes ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah past his prime. Alexander Isak waste of money. The coach bald.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football itself, to influence the way we watch it, an entire sport repivoted around discussion topics and immediate responses, something that occurs in the background while we scroll through our phones, unable to detach from the constant flow of takes and further hot takes. It may be this player taking the hit at present. However, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience here.