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Imagine the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Next, juxtapose it with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, appearing like he's missed a sitter. Do not bother locating an actual photo of him missing; context is the enemy. Then, include statistics in a large, silly font. Don't forget some emoticons. Post the image across all platforms.

Would you point out that Højlund's tally features scores in the Champions League while Sesko does not compete in Europe? Of course not. And would you note that several of the Dane's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and generates far more chances. You manage online for a major brand, raw interaction is your livelihood, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

Thus the wheel of online material spins. Your next task is to scan a 44-minute podcast featuring Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he calls the acquisition 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. No one needs that. Simply ensure "weird" and "Sesko" appear together in the headline. The audience will be furious.

The Season of Potential and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my favourite times to watch football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, squads and strategies are still fresh, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the coming months are staking their claims. The summer market is closed. Nobody is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are still in the game. Right now, anything is possible.

However, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my most disliked times to read about football. Because although no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league right now? Please a decision now.

Sesko as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player caught between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The need to delay final conclusions, allowing technical development and strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to generate instant verdicts, a constant stream of takes and jokes, out-of-context condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a square that can not truly be solved.

It is not my aim to provide a in-depth analysis of Sesko's time at United so far. The guy has been in the lineup on four occasions in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and taken a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we analysing? Nor 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 argue thrillingly on a popular show over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this season (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I loved watching Sesko at his former club: a big, fast racing car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: afforded the license to rampage but also the leeway to fail. And in part this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most pitiless gap between the time and air he needs, and the opportunity he is going to get.

There was a case of this during the international break, when a viral chart handily informed us that Sesko had been deemed – decisively – the worst signing of the recent market by a survey of 20 agents. Naturally, the media are by no means the only ones in this. Team social media, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with skin in the game is now essentially operating along the same principles, an environment explicitly nosed towards provocation.

The Psychological Toll

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 minds? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of playing in the middle of this, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about players is now essentially content, product, public property to be repackaged and traded.

Indeed, partly this is because United are United, the entity that continues to feed the narrative, a major institution that must constantly be producing the strong emotions. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of opinion most visibly and harshly observed at this season, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. All summer long we have been desiring footballers, praising them, drooling over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, many of those very players are now being dismissed as failures. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that Sesko meets their rivals on the weekend: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at home in the Premier League and yet in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like submitting a missing person’s report on someone who popped to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Their star past his prime. The striker an expensive flop. The coach losing his hair.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football itself, to inflect the way we watch it, an entire sport repivoted around discussion topics and immediate responses, an activity that occurs in the background while we browse through our phones, unable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit right now. But in a way, everyone is losing something in this process.