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Imagine the following: a happy the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Next, place it with a dejected the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Don't worry locating a real picture of that miss; background information is your adversary. Then, include statistics in a big, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Share it everywhere.

Will you point out that Højlund's goal count includes strikes in the Champions League while Sesko does not compete in continental tournaments? Certainly not. And would you note that four of the Dane's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and generates many more chances. You run social media for a major brand, pure interaction is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the cycle of content turns. Your next task is to scan a 44-minute podcast with Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". Just before, where Schmeichel prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. No one wants that. Just make sure "strange" and "Sesko" appear together in the title. The audience will be outraged.

This Time of Promise and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has long been one of my preferred periods 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 shut. Nobody is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. All teams are still in the game. At this precise point, all is possibility.

However, for many of the same reasons, this period has also been one of my least favourite times to read about football. For while nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is resurgent. The German talent 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 context, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to delay definitive judgment, allowing technical development and strategic understanding to mature. And the imperative to produce permanent definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of opinions and memes, out-of-context criticisms and pointless comparisons, a square that can not truly be solved.

It is not my aim to offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's stint at Manchester United so far. The guy has started four times in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and had a grand total of 116 touches. What precisely are we analysing? And do I propose to replicate the pundits' notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts duel thrillingly on a podcast over whether he needs ten strikes to be a success this season (one pundit), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I enjoyed watching him at Leipzig: a big, screeching racing car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: given the freedom to rampage but also the leeway to miss. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most pitiless gulf between the time and air he requires, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

There was a case of this over the international break, when a widely shared chart handily stated that the player had been judged – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the recent market by a survey of football representatives. And of course, the press are not the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of fake followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially aligned along the same principles, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to us? Do we realize, on any level, what this endless stream of irritation is doing to our brains? Separate from the essential weirdness of being a player in the center of this, aware on some surreal chain-reaction level that every single thing about players is now essentially content, product, open-source property to be repackaged and traded.

Indeed, in part this is because United are United, the entity that continues to feed the cycle, a major institution that must constantly be producing the big feelings. But also, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of judgment most clearly and harshly glimpsed at this season, about a month after the window has closed. All summer long we have been desiring players, eulogising them, salivating over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, a lot of those same players are already being disdained as broken goods. Is it time to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need their striker wise? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that Sesko faces their rivals on Sunday: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at home in the league and yet in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like filing a a report on someone who popped to the shops 30 minutes ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah finished. Alexander Isak waste of money. The coach bald.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has started to replace football the actual game, to inflect the way we watch it, an whole competition repivoted around discussion topics and reaction, an activity that happens in the background while we browse through our devices, unable to detach from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. Perhaps this player bearing the brunt at present. However, we're all losing a part of the experience here.