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Imagine the following: a happy Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Now, place that with a dejected the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he's missed an open goal. Do not worry locating a real picture of that miss; context is your adversary. Now, add statistics in a big, comical font. Remember some emoticons. Post it across all platforms.

Would you mention that Højlund's goal count includes strikes in the Champions League while his counterpart does not compete in continental tournaments? Of course not. Nor would you highlight that several of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that his national team is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and generates far more chances. You manage social media for a large outlet, pure interaction is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of online material turns. Your next task is to scan a lengthy podcast with Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". Just before, where he prefaces his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. No one wants that. Simply ensure "strange" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. The audience will be outraged.

This Time of Promise and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has long been one of my favourite times to observe football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics 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. Nobody is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are still in the game. At this precise point, anything is possible.

Yet, for similar reasons, this period has long been one of my most disliked times to read about football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league right now? We need an answer immediately.

The Player as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player caught between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The need to withhold final conclusions, allowing technical development and strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to generate permanent verdicts, a constant stream of takes and jokes, context-free criticisms and meaningless comparisons, a puzzle that can never truly be solved.

I do not propose to offer a substantive evaluation of Sesko's stint at United so far. The guy has started four times in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and taken a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we analysing? And do I propose to replicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits argue passionately on a popular show over whether he needs ten strikes to be a success this season (Neville), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching him at Leipzig: a powerful, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: afforded the license to attack 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 "harsh judgments" are handed down in about the time it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most ruthless gulf between the time and air he needs, and the opportunity he is going to get.

We saw an example of this during the national team pause, when a viral chart handily stated that the player had been judged – decisively – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a survey of 20 agents. Naturally, the press are by no means the only ones in such behavior. Club channels, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: all parties with skin in the game is now basically aligned along the identical rules, an environment deliberately geared for provocation.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to ourselves? Are we aware, on some level, what this endless stream of irritation is doing to our minds? Separate from the inherent strangeness of playing in the center of this, aware on some surreal butterfly-effect level that each aspect about them is now essentially content, product, public property to be packaged and exchanged.

And yes, in part this is because United are United, the entity that continues to feed the narrative, a big club that must always be generating the strong emotions. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, a swing of judgment most clearly and cruelly glimpsed at this time of year, about a month after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been coveting players, eulogising them, salivating over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, a lot of those very players are already being dismissed as broken goods. Is it time to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the point of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that he faces their rivals on Sunday: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at home in the league and yet in their own state of perceived turmoil, like submitting a missing person’s report on someone who went to the store half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Their star past his prime. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. The coach losing his hair.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to inflect the way we view it, an entire sport reoriented around talking points and reaction, something that occurs in the backdrop while we browse through our devices, incapable to disconnect from the constant flow of takes and more takes. Perhaps this player bearing the brunt right now. However, we're all sacrificing something in this process.