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Imagine the following: a happy Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Now, place it with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he's missed an open goal. Do not worry locating a real picture of that miss; context is your adversary. Now, add statistics in a big, comical font. Remember some emoticons. Post the image across all platforms.

Will you point out that Højlund's tally features scores in the Champions League while his counterpart isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. Nor would you highlight that several of Højlund's goals came against weaker national sides, or that his national team is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and creates far more scoring opportunities. If you run online for a major brand, pure engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

Thus the wheel of content spins. Your next task is to sift through a 44-minute podcast with Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he prefaces his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. No one wants that. Just ensure "weird" and "the player" are paired in the title. The audience will be outraged.

This Time of Potential and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my preferred times to observe football. Leaves fall, winds shift, the teams and tactics are still fresh, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the season ahead are staking their claims. The summer market is closed. Nobody is talking about the quadruple yet. All teams are in contention. Right now, all is possibility.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? Please an answer immediately.

Sesko as Patient Zero

In many ways, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The need to withhold definitive judgment, allowing layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to mature. And the demand to generate permanent definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of opinions and memes, out-of-context criticisms and pointless contrasts, a puzzle that can never truly be solved.

It is not my aim to offer a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. The guy has started four times in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and had a mere of 116 touches. What exactly are we evaluating? And do I propose to replicate the pundits' notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts argue thrillingly on a popular show over whether he needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this season (one pundit), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I enjoyed watching him at his former club: a powerful, fast racing car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: given the license to rampage but also the freedom to fail. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most pitiless gulf between the patience and space he requires, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

We saw a case of this during the national team pause, when a viral chart conveniently informed us that Sesko had been judged – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of football representatives. Naturally, the media are not alone in this. Club channels, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: all parties with a vested interest is now basically operating along the same principles, an environment deliberately nosed towards provocation.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to ourselves? Are we aware, on any level, what this infinite sluice of irritation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of playing in the middle of it all, knowing on a bizarre butterfly-effect 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 entity that continues to feed the narrative, a major institution that must constantly be generating the big feelings. But also, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of judgment most visibly and harshly observed at this season, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. All summer long we have been desiring players, eulogising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those same players are now being dismissed as failures. Should we start to worry about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the point of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that he faces Liverpool on Sunday: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and yet in their own state of feverish crisis, like submitting a a report on someone who popped to the shops 30 minutes ago. Too open. Their star finished. 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 itself, to influence the way we watch it, an whole competition repivoted around talking points and reaction, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we browse through our devices, unable to disconnect from the saline drip of takes and more takes. Perhaps this player bearing the brunt right now. But in a way, everyone is losing a part of the experience in this process.