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Picture this: a smiling the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Now, place it with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Don't worry finding an actual photo of that miss; background information is the enemy. Now, include statistics in a big, comical font. Don't forget some emoticons. Post the image everywhere.

Would you point out that Højlund's goal count includes scores in the premier European competition while Sesko does not compete in continental tournaments? Certainly not. Nor will you highlight that four of Højlund's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that his national team is much stronger to Slovenia and generates many more scoring opportunities. You manage social media for a large outlet, pure engagement is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and context is your sworn enemy.

So the cycle of online material turns. Your next task is to sift through a 44-minute interview with the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where Schmeichel qualifies his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. Nobody needs that. Just make sure "weird" and "Sesko" appear together in the headline. The audience will be outraged.

The Season of Promise and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my preferred times to watch football. Leaves fall, 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. Nobody is mentioning the quadruple yet. Everyone are in contention. Right now, all is possibility.

However, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. For while nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is resurgent. The German talent has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league right now? We need an answer now.

Sesko as The Prime Example

In many ways, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player caught between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The need to delay final conclusions, to let technical development and tactical sophistication to mature. And the demand to produce instant verdicts, a constant stream of opinions and jokes, out-of-context condemnations and pointless comparisons, a square that can not truly be solved.

It is not my aim to provide a substantive evaluation of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. The guy has been in the lineup on four occasions in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and taken a mere of 116 touches. What precisely are we evaluating? 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 popular show over whether he needs ten strikes to be a success this year (one pundit), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at Leipzig: a big, screeching sports car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: afforded the freedom to rampage but also the leeway to fail. And in part this is why United feels like the cruellest 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 pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most pitiless gulf between the time and air he needs, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

There was a case of this during the international break, when a widely shared infographic conveniently stated that the player had been judged – decisively – the worst signing of the recent market by a survey of football representatives. And of course, the media are not alone in such behavior. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: everybody with a vested interest is now basically aligned along the identical rules, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to us? Do we realize, on any level, what this endless sluice of irritation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of being a player in the center of this, knowing on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about them is now basically material, product, open-source property to be packaged and exchanged.

And yes, in part this is because United are United, the corpse that continues to feed the cycle, a major institution that must constantly be producing the big feelings. But also, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of judgment most clearly and cruelly observed at this season, about a month after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been coveting players, eulogising them, salivating over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, many 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 their striker necessary? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that Sesko faces their rivals on the weekend: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and yet in their own state of feverish crisis, like filing a missing person’s report on someone who went to the store 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Their star past his prime. Alexander Isak waste of money. The coach losing his hair.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football itself, to influence the way we view it, an whole competition reoriented around discussion topics and reaction, an activity that happens in the background while we browse through our phones, incapable to detach from the constant flow of takes and further hot takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit at present. But in a way, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.