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Imagine the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Now, place that with a dejected Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he just missed a sitter. Don't worry finding a real picture of that miss; context is the enemy. Now, include some goal stats in a large, silly font. Don't forget the emojis. Post it everywhere.

Would you point out that Højlund's tally features scores in the Champions League while his counterpart does not compete in Europe? Certainly not. Nor will you note that four of the Dane's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and creates many more scoring opportunities. You manage social media for a large outlet, raw interaction is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

So the cycle of online material spins. Your next task is to sift through a 44-minute interview featuring Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "weird". Just before, where Schmeichel prefaces his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. Nobody needs that. Simply make sure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. The audience will be outraged.

The Season of Potential and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has long been one of my preferred times to observe football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are newly formed, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the season ahead are planting their flags. The summer market is shut. No one is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. All teams are in contention. At this precise point, all is possibility.

Yet, for similar reasons, this period has also been one of my most disliked times to read about football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. The German talent has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo 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 respect, a player caught between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The need to delay definitive judgment, to let layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to generate permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of opinions and memes, context-free condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a square that can never truly be solved.

I do not propose to offer a in-depth analysis of Sesko's time at United so far. He has started on four occasions in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and had a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we analysing? And do I propose to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits duel passionately on a popular show over whether he needs 10 goals to be a success this season (Neville), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching Sesko at his former club: 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 freedom to miss. And in part this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in about the time it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most ruthless gulf between the patience and space he needs, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

There was an example of this over the international break, when a widely shared infographic handily stated that the player had been deemed – decisively – the worst signing of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. And of course, the press are not the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: everybody with skin in the game is now basically operating along the same principles, an ecosystem explicitly geared for controversy.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to us? Are we aware, on any level, what this infinite stream of irritation is doing to our minds? Separate from the essential weirdness of being a player in the center of this, knowing on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that each aspect about players is now essentially material, commodity, open-source 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 strong emotions. But also, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of judgment most visibly and cruelly glimpsed at this season, about a month after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been desiring players, praising them, salivating over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are now being dismissed as failures. Is it time to worry about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

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 perceived turmoil, like filing a a report on a person who popped to the shops 30 minutes ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah finished. Alexander Isak waste of money. The coach losing his hair.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has started to replace football itself, to influence the way we watch it, an whole competition reoriented around talking points and reaction, an activity that happens in the background while we browse through our phones, incapable to detach from the constant flow of takes and more takes. It may be Sesko bearing the brunt right now. But in a way, we're all losing a part of the experience here.