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Imagine the following: a smiling the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Next, juxtapose that with a dejected the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, appearing like he just missed an open goal. Don't worry finding a real picture of that miss; context is the enemy. Now, include some goal stats in a large, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Post it everywhere.

Would you mention that Højlund's tally features scores in the Champions League while Sesko isn't playing in Europe? Certainly not. And would you note that several of Højlund's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and creates many more scoring opportunities. You run online for a major brand, pure engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the prime target, and context is your sworn enemy.

So the cycle of content spins. The next job is to scan a 44-minute podcast with Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where he qualifies his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. Nobody wants that. Just ensure "strange" and "the player" are paired in the headline. The audience will be outraged.

This Time of Promise and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has long been one of my favourite periods to observe football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, squads and strategies are newly formed, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the coming months are staking their claims. The summer market is shut. Nobody is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are still in the game. Right now, anything is possible.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. For while no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. 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 immediately.

Sesko as Patient Zero

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The need to delay final conclusions, allowing layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to develop. And the demand to generate permanent verdicts, a constant stream of opinions and jokes, context-free condemnations and pointless comparisons, a puzzle that can never truly be circled.

It is not my aim to offer a substantive evaluation of Sesko's stint at Manchester United so far. The guy has started on four occasions in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and had a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we analysing? And will I attempt to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel passionately on a podcast over whether he needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this year (one pundit), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at Leipzig: a big, screeching racing car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: afforded the freedom to rampage but also the freedom to miss. And in part this is why 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 pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most pitiless gulf between the patience and space he needs, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

We saw an example of this during the international break, when a viral chart conveniently stated that Sesko had been judged – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. And of course, the media are by no means the only ones in this. Team social media, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: all parties with a vested interest is now basically operating along the identical rules, an ecosystem deliberately geared for provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to ourselves? Are we aware, on any level, what this endless sluice of irritation is doing to our minds? Separate from the essential weirdness of playing in the center of this, aware on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that each aspect about players is now basically material, product, public property to be packaged and traded.

And yes, 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 temporary malaise, a swing of judgment most visibly and harshly glimpsed at this time of year, about a month after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been coveting footballers, praising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, many of those same players are now being dismissed as failures. Is it time to worry about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the point of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that Sesko meets their rivals on the weekend: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at home in the league and yet in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like filing a missing person’s report on someone who popped to the store half an hour ago. Too open. Their star past his prime. Alexander Isak waste of money. The coach losing his hair.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football itself, to influence the way we view it, an entire sport repivoted around talking points and reaction, something that happens in the backdrop while we scroll through our phones, unable to disconnect from the saline drip of takes and more takes. It may be this player bearing the brunt right now. But in a way, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience here.