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Picture this: a happy Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Next, place it with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he's missed an open goal. Do not worry locating an actual photo of him missing; background information is the enemy. Now, add some goal stats in a big, comical font. Remember some emoticons. Post the image everywhere.

Would you mention that Højlund's tally features strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in Europe? Of course not. Nor would you highlight that several of Højlund's goals came against weaker national sides, or that his national team is far superior to Slovenia and generates many more chances. You manage social media for a major brand, raw engagement is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and context is your sworn enemy.

So the cycle of content turns. The next job is to sift through a 44-minute interview featuring the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where he qualifies his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. Nobody wants that. Simply ensure "strange" and "the player" appear together in the title. The audience will be furious.

The Season of Promise and Hasty Opinions

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 transfer window is closed. Nobody is talking about the quadruple yet. All teams are in contention. At this precise point, all is possibility.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, this period has long been one of my least favourite times to read about football. For while no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league right now? We need an answer now.

Sesko as The Prime Example

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The need to withhold final conclusions, allowing technical development and tactical sophistication to develop. And the imperative to produce permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of opinions and memes, out-of-context condemnations and meaningless contrasts, a square that can never truly be circled.

It is not my aim to offer a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's stint at United so far. He has been in the lineup on four occasions in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and had a mere of 116 touches. What exactly are we evaluating? Nor do I propose to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits argue thrillingly on a popular show over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be a success this season (Neville), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I enjoyed watching Sesko at Leipzig: a big, screeching sports car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: given the freedom to rampage but also the freedom to miss. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most ruthless gulf between the patience and space he requires, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

We saw an example of this during the international break, when a viral infographic conveniently informed us that the player had been deemed – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a survey of football representatives. Naturally, the press are by no means alone in this. Club channels, influencers, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: all parties with skin in the game is now essentially aligned along the identical rules, an environment explicitly geared for provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to ourselves? Are we aware, on any level, what this endless stream of irritation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the middle of it all, knowing on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that every single thing about players is now basically material, commodity, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

And yes, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a major institution that must always be producing the strong emotions. But also, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of opinion most visibly and cruelly glimpsed at this season, about a month after the window has closed. All summer long we have been desiring players, eulogising them, drooling over them. Now, only a handful of games later, a lot of those same players are already being dismissed as broken goods. Is it time to be concerned about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that he faces Liverpool 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 a person who went to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Their star finished. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to influence the way we view it, an whole competition reoriented around talking points and immediate responses, something that happens in the backdrop while we scroll through our devices, unable to detach from the saline drip of takes and more takes. Perhaps this player bearing the brunt at present. But in a way, everyone is sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.