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Imagine the following: a happy the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Now, place that with a dejected the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, appearing like he just missed an open goal. Do not worry locating an actual photo of him missing; context is your adversary. Then, add statistics in a large, comical font. Remember the emojis. Share the image everywhere.

Would you mention that Højlund's tally includes scores in the Champions League while Sesko isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. Nor will you highlight that several of the Dane's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and creates far more scoring opportunities. If you run online for a major brand, pure interaction is your livelihood, United are the biggest draw, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of online material turns. The next job is to scan a 44-minute interview featuring Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he qualifies his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. No one needs that. Simply make sure "strange" and "Sesko" appear together in the headline. People will be furious.

This Time of Potential and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my preferred periods to watch football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, squads and strategies are newly formed, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the season ahead are staking their claims. The summer market is shut. No one is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. All teams are still in the game. Right now, all is possibility.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, this period has long been one of my most disliked times to read about football. Because although no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is reborn. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league at this moment? Please a decision immediately.

Sesko as The Prime Example

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to withhold definitive judgment, to let technical development and strategic understanding to mature. And the imperative to generate permanent definitive judgment, a constant stream of opinions and memes, context-free condemnations and pointless comparisons, a square that can not truly be solved.

It is not my aim to offer a in-depth analysis of Sesko's time at United so far. He 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 Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts duel passionately on a popular show over whether he needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this year (one pundit), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I enjoyed watching Sesko at Leipzig: a big, screeching racing car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: given the freedom to attack but also the leeway to fail. And in part 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 widest and most pitiless gulf between the time and air he needs, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

We saw a case of this during the national team pause, when a widely shared infographic conveniently stated that the player had been deemed – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the recent market by a poll of football representatives. And of course, the press are not alone in this. Team social media, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with a vested interest is now basically operating along the same principles, an environment explicitly geared for controversy.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to us? Do we realize, on some level, what this infinite stream of irritation is doing to our minds? Separate from the inherent strangeness of playing in the middle of this, aware on some surreal butterfly-effect level that each aspect about players is now essentially content, product, open-source property to be packaged and exchanged.

And yes, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that keeps nourishing the cycle, a major institution that must constantly be producing the big feelings. However, in part this is a temporary malaise, a swing of opinion most visibly and cruelly observed at this time of year, about a month after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been coveting footballers, praising them, drooling over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, many of those same players are already being dismissed as broken goods. Should we start to worry about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker necessary? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that he meets their rivals on Sunday: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at home in the Premier League and yet in their own situation of feverish crisis, like filing a a report on a person who popped to the shops half an hour ago. Too open. Their star finished. Alexander Isak waste of money. The coach losing his hair.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has started to replace football the actual game, to influence the way we view it, an whole competition repivoted around talking points and immediate responses, an activity that happens in the backdrop while we scroll through our phones, incapable to detach from the constant flow of opinions and further hot takes. Perhaps Sesko bearing the brunt right now. However, we're all losing a part of the experience in this process.