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Imagine the following: a smiling the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Now, juxtapose that with a dejected Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed a sitter. Do not bother locating an actual photo of that miss; background information is the enemy. Now, add statistics in a large, comical font. Remember the emojis. Post it across all platforms.

Will you mention that Højlund's tally features scores in the Champions League while Sesko does not compete in Europe? Of course not. And will you highlight that four of Højlund's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is much stronger to Slovenia and generates far more scoring opportunities. If you manage online for a major brand, raw engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the prime target, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

So the wheel of online material spins. The next job is to scan a lengthy interview with Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he qualifies his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. No one needs that. Just make sure "weird" and "Sesko" appear together in the title. People will be furious.

The Season of Potential and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my favourite periods to watch football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are still fresh, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the coming months are planting their flags. The transfer window is shut. No one is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are in contention. At this precise point, all is possibility.

However, for similar reasons, this period has long been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. 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 The Prime Example

In many ways, Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player caught between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The need to withhold final conclusions, allowing technical development and tactical sophistication to mature. And the demand to produce instant definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, context-free criticisms and meaningless contrasts, a square that can not truly be solved.

It is not my aim to provide a substantive evaluation of Sesko's stint at United to date. He has been in the lineup four times in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and had a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we analysing? And do I propose to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel thrillingly on a popular show over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this year (one pundit), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I loved watching him at his former club: a powerful, fast sports car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: 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 "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most pitiless gulf between the time and air he requires, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

We saw a case of this over the national team pause, when a viral infographic conveniently stated that Sesko had been judged – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a poll of football representatives. And of course, the media are by no means the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of fake followers: everybody with a vested interest is now basically aligned along the identical rules, an environment explicitly nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to ourselves? Are we aware, on some level, what this endless stream of aggravation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of playing in the center of this, aware on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that every single thing about players is now basically content, product, public property to be repackaged and exchanged.

And yes, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that continues to feed the narrative, a major institution that must always be generating the strong emotions. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of judgment most visibly and cruelly glimpsed at this season, about a month after the window has closed. All summer long we have been coveting footballers, eulogising 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 Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need their striker wise? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that Sesko meets their rivals on Sunday: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the league and yet in their own state of perceived turmoil, like submitting a a report on someone who went to the store 30 minutes ago. Too open. Their star finished. The striker an expensive flop. The coach bald.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football itself, to inflect the way we view it, an whole competition reoriented around talking points and immediate responses, an activity that occurs in the background while we browse through our phones, unable to detach from the constant flow of takes and more takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit at present. However, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience here.