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Picture the following: a happy Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Next, place that with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Don't bother locating an actual photo of him missing; background information is your adversary. Then, include statistics in a big, comical font. Remember the emojis. Post it everywhere.

Would you point out that Højlund's tally includes strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko does not compete in continental tournaments? Of course not. And would you highlight that several of Højlund's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is much stronger to Slovenia and creates far more chances. You manage social media for a large outlet, pure interaction is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and context is your sworn enemy.

Thus the cycle of content turns. Your next task is to scan a lengthy podcast featuring the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where Schmeichel qualifies his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. No one wants that. Just make sure "strange" and "the player" are paired in the headline. The audience will be outraged.

This Time of Promise and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has long been one of my favourite periods to observe football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, squads and strategies are newly formed, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the coming months are planting their flags. The transfer window is shut. No one is talking about the quadruple yet. Everyone are in contention. At this precise point, all is possibility.

However, for similar reasons, this period has long been one of my most disliked times to read about football. Because although no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league at this moment? Please an answer now.

Sesko as Patient Zero

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player caught between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to delay definitive judgment, to let technical development and strategic understanding to mature. And the imperative to generate instant verdicts, a conveyor belt of opinions and memes, out-of-context condemnations and meaningless contrasts, a square that can not truly be solved.

I do not propose to offer a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's stint at United to date. The guy has been in the lineup four times in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and taken a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we evaluating? And will I attempt to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts duel thrillingly on a podcast over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this season (one pundit), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at his former club: a powerful, screeching racing car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: given the license to rampage but also the freedom to fail. And in part this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in roughly the duration it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most pitiless gap between the time and air he needs, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

There was a case of this over the national team pause, when a widely shared infographic conveniently stated that the player had been deemed – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a poll of football representatives. And of course, the media are not alone in this. Team social media, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially operating along the identical rules, an ecosystem deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to ourselves? Are we aware, on any level, what this infinite stream of irritation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of being a player in the middle of it all, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about them is now essentially content, commodity, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that continues to feed the cycle, a major institution that must always be producing the strong emotions. But also, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of opinion most visibly and harshly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks 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, a lot of those very players are already being dismissed as failures. Should we start to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need their striker wise? What was the point of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that Sesko faces Liverpool on the weekend: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the Premier League and yet in their own state of feverish crisis, like submitting a missing person’s report on a person who went to the shops 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Their star past his prime. The striker waste of money. The coach losing his hair.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to influence the way we watch it, an whole competition repivoted around discussion topics and reaction, an activity that occurs in the background while we browse through our phones, unable to detach from the constant flow of opinions and more takes. Perhaps this player bearing the brunt right now. However, everyone is sacrificing something in this process.