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Picture the following: a happy the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Next, juxtapose that with a dejected Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he's missed a sitter. Don't bother finding a real picture of that miss; context is your adversary. Now, add some goal stats in a big, silly font. Don't forget the emojis. Post the image across all platforms.

Would you mention that Højlund's goal count includes scores in the Champions League while Sesko does not compete in Europe? Of course not. Nor will you highlight that several of the Dane's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and creates far more scoring opportunities. If you manage online for a major brand, pure interaction is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

So the cycle of content spins. The next job 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 remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. No one needs that. Just make sure "weird" and "the player" are paired 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 observe football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are newly formed, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the season ahead are planting their flags. The transfer window is shut. No one is mentioning the quadruple yet. Everyone are in contention. At this precise point, anything is possible.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. For while no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league at this moment? We need an answer now.

Sesko as Patient Zero

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player caught between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The need to withhold definitive judgment, to let layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to develop. And the demand to generate permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of opinions and memes, context-free criticisms and pointless comparisons, a puzzle that can never truly be circled.

It is not my aim to provide a substantive analysis of Sesko's stint at United to date. He has been in the lineup on four occasions in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and had a grand total of 116 touches. What precisely are we analysing? And will I attempt to duplicate the pundits' notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits argue passionately on a podcast over whether he needs ten strikes to be a success this year (Neville), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I enjoyed watching him at his former club: a powerful, screeching sports car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: given the license to attack but also the leeway to fail. Partly this is why Manchester 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 widest and most ruthless gap between the time and air he requires, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

We saw an example of this during the national team pause, when a viral chart conveniently stated that the player had been judged – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a poll of 20 agents. And of course, the media are by no means the only ones in this. Team social media, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: everybody with a vested interest is now basically operating along the same principles, an ecosystem explicitly geared for controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to ourselves? Do we realize, on any level, what this endless sluice of irritation is doing to our minds? Separate from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the middle of this, knowing on some surreal chain-reaction level that each aspect about them is now essentially material, commodity, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

Indeed, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a major institution that must constantly be generating the big feelings. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a swing of opinion most clearly and cruelly observed at this time of year, about a month after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been coveting players, eulogising them, salivating over them. Now, only a handful of games later, many of those very players are now being dismissed as broken goods. Is it time to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that he meets their rivals on the weekend: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at home in the Premier League and yet in their own situation of feverish crisis, like submitting a missing person’s report on a person who went to the store 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Their star finished. Alexander Isak waste of money. The coach losing his hair.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football itself, to inflect the way we view it, an whole competition reoriented around talking points and immediate responses, an activity that occurs in the background while we scroll through our phones, incapable to disconnect from the constant flow of opinions and further hot takes. Perhaps this player taking the hit right now. But in a way, everyone is sacrificing something in this process.