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Imagine this: a smiling the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Now, place it with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he's missed a sitter. Do not bother finding an actual photo of him missing; context is your adversary. Now, add statistics in a big, comical font. Remember some emoticons. Post it across all platforms.

Will you point out that Højlund's goal count features scores in the premier European competition while his counterpart isn't playing in continental tournaments? Of course not. And will you note that four of the Dane's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and generates many more scoring opportunities. If you manage online for a major brand, pure engagement is what pays the bills, United are the biggest draw, and context is the thing to avoid.

Thus the cycle of online material turns. The next job is to scan a 44-minute interview with Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "strange". Just before, where Schmeichel prefaces his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. No one wants that. Simply ensure "strange" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. The audience will be furious.

This Time of Potential and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my favourite times to watch football. Leaves fall, winds shift, the teams and tactics are still fresh, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the season ahead are staking their claims. The summer market is closed. Nobody is talking about the quadruple yet. All teams are in contention. At this precise point, all is possibility.

Yet, 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, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is reborn. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league right now? Please an answer immediately.

The Player as Patient Zero

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 delay final conclusions, to let layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to mature. And the demand to produce instant verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and memes, out-of-context condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a puzzle that can never truly be circled.

I do not propose to provide a in-depth analysis of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. He has started four times in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and taken a mere of 116 touches. What precisely are we analysing? Nor will I attempt to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts argue thrillingly on a podcast over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this year (one pundit), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I loved watching Sesko at his former club: a big, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: afforded the license to rampage but also the freedom to miss. And in part this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most pitiless gulf between the patience and space he needs, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

There was an example of this over the national team pause, when a widely shared chart 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. Naturally, the media are not alone in such behavior. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: all parties with skin in the game is now essentially operating along the same principles, an environment deliberately nosed towards provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to ourselves? Are we aware, on any level, what this infinite sluice of aggravation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the middle of this, aware on some surreal butterfly-effect level that every single thing about players is now essentially content, commodity, public property to be repackaged and traded.

And yes, partly this is because United are United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a major institution that must constantly be producing the strong emotions. However, in part this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of opinion most clearly and cruelly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been desiring footballers, eulogising them, salivating over them. Now, only a handful of games later, a lot of those very players are already being dismissed as broken goods. Should we start 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 Liverpool on Sunday: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at home in the Premier League and somehow in their own situation of feverish crisis, like submitting a missing person’s report on someone who popped to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah finished. Alexander Isak waste of money. Arne Slot bald.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has started to replace football itself, to inflect the way we watch it, an whole competition repivoted around discussion topics and immediate responses, something that happens in the backdrop while we browse through our phones, incapable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. It may be this player taking the hit right now. But in a way, everyone is sacrificing something here.