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Picture the following: a happy the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Next, juxtapose it with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, looking as if he's missed an open goal. Don't worry locating an actual photo of him missing; context is the enemy. Now, add statistics in a large, silly font. Don't forget some emoticons. Post the image across all platforms.

Would you mention that Højlund's goal count includes scores in the Champions League 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 much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and creates far more chances. You manage online for a major brand, pure engagement is your livelihood, United are the biggest draw, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

Thus the cycle of content turns. Your next task is to sift through a 44-minute podcast featuring Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he prefaces his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. No one needs that. Simply make sure "strange" and "Sesko" are paired in the headline. The audience will be furious.

The Season of Potential and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has long been one of my favourite periods to watch football. Leaves fall, winds shift, the teams and tactics are still fresh, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the season ahead are staking their claims. The summer market is shut. Nobody is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are still in the game. At this precise point, anything is possible.

However, for similar reasons, this period has long been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. For while no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is reborn. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league at this moment? We need an answer immediately.

The Player as The Prime Example

In many ways, Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player caught between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The need to withhold definitive judgment, to let layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to mature. And the demand to produce permanent definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of opinions and memes, out-of-context criticisms and meaningless comparisons, a puzzle that can never truly be solved.

I do not propose to offer a in-depth analysis of Sesko's time at Manchester United to date. The guy has started on four occasions in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and taken a grand total of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? And will I attempt to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts argue thrillingly on a popular show over whether he needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this season (one pundit), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I loved watching Sesko at his former club: a powerful, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: afforded the freedom to rampage but also the freedom to fail. And in part this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in about the time it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most pitiless gap between the patience and space he requires, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

We saw an example of this over the international break, when a widely shared infographic handily stated that Sesko had been deemed – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the press are not the only ones in this. Club channels, influencers, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: all parties with a vested interest is now basically aligned along the identical rules, an ecosystem deliberately geared for provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to ourselves? Are we aware, on any level, what this infinite stream of irritation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the middle of it all, aware on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that each aspect about them is now basically content, product, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

And yes, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that continues to feed the narrative, a big club that must always be producing the strong emotions. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of judgment most visibly and cruelly observed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been desiring players, eulogising them, salivating over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, many of those same players are now being disdained as failures. Is it time to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that Sesko meets their rivals on the weekend: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and somehow in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like submitting a missing person’s report on someone who popped to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah past his prime. The striker an expensive flop. The coach bald.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has started to replace football itself, to influence the way we watch it, an entire sport reoriented around discussion topics and immediate responses, something that happens in the backdrop while we browse through our devices, incapable to detach 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.