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Picture this: a happy the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Next, place it with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, looking as if he just missed a sitter. Don't bother locating a real picture of him missing; context is the enemy. Now, include statistics in a big, silly font. Don't forget some emoticons. Share it everywhere.

Would you point out that Højlund's tally features strikes in the premier European competition while his counterpart does not compete in continental tournaments? Of course not. Nor will you highlight that four of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and generates far more scoring opportunities. You manage online for a large outlet, pure engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the prime target, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of content turns. The next job is to scan a 44-minute podcast with Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where he prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. Nobody wants that. Just make sure "weird" and "the player" are paired in the title. People will be furious.

The Season of Potential and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my preferred periods to observe football. Leaves fall, winds shift, squads and strategies are still fresh, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the coming months are planting their flags. The summer market is shut. No one is talking about the quadruple yet. Everyone are still in the game. Right now, anything is possible.

However, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my least favourite times to read about football. For while no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? Please an answer immediately.

Sesko as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player caught between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to delay final conclusions, allowing layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to develop. And the imperative to generate instant definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of takes and memes, context-free criticisms and meaningless contrasts, a puzzle that can never truly be circled.

It is not my aim to provide a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's time at United to date. He has been in the lineup on four occasions in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and taken a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we analysing? Nor do I propose to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits argue thrillingly on a podcast over whether he needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this season (Neville), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I enjoyed watching him at Leipzig: a powerful, fast sports car of a striker, 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 cruellest 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 gap between the patience and space he requires, 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 informed us that Sesko had been judged – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a survey of 20 agents. And of course, the press are by no means alone in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with skin in the game is now essentially aligned along the identical rules, an ecosystem deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to us? Do we realize, on some level, what this endless sluice of aggravation is doing to our minds? Separate from the essential weirdness of being a player in the center of this, knowing on some surreal butterfly-effect level that each aspect about them is now essentially content, product, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

Indeed, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that continues to feed the cycle, a major institution that must always be producing the strong emotions. However, in part this is a temporary malaise, a swing of judgment most visibly and harshly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been desiring footballers, eulogising them, drooling over them. Now, only a handful of games later, a lot of those same players are already being disdained as failures. Should we start to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker necessary? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that he faces their rivals on Sunday: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at home in the Premier League and yet in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like filing a missing person’s report on someone who popped to the store half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah past his prime. The striker an expensive flop. Arne Slot bald.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has started to replace football the actual game, to inflect the way we view it, an entire sport repivoted around discussion topics and reaction, something that occurs in the backdrop while we browse through our devices, incapable to detach from the saline drip of opinions and further hot takes. It may be this player bearing the brunt at present. But in a way, everyone is sacrificing something in this process.