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Picture the following: a happy the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Now, place it with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, appearing like he just missed a sitter. Do not worry finding an actual photo of him missing; context is the enemy. Now, include some goal stats in a big, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Post the image across all platforms.

Will you point out that Højlund's goal count features scores in the Champions League while Sesko does not compete in continental tournaments? Of course not. And will you note that several of the Dane's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is much stronger to Slovenia and generates far more chances. If you manage social media for a major brand, raw engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

So the wheel of online material spins. Your next task is to scan a lengthy podcast with Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he qualifies his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. No one needs that. Simply ensure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired in the headline. People will be outraged.

The Season of Promise and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my preferred periods to observe football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are newly formed, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the coming months are planting their flags. The transfer window is closed. Nobody is talking about the quadruple yet. Everyone are in contention. Right now, all is possibility.

Yet, for similar reasons, this period has long been one of my most disliked times to read about football. For while nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is resurgent. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league at this moment? We need a decision now.

Sesko as The Prime Example

In many ways, Sesko feels like Patient Zero 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 strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to generate instant definitive judgment, a constant stream of takes and memes, context-free criticisms and pointless contrasts, a puzzle that can never truly be circled.

It is not my aim to provide a substantive analysis of Sesko's time at United so far. He has started on four occasions in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and had a mere of 116 touches. What precisely are we analysing? And will I attempt to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits duel thrillingly on a podcast over whether he needs 10 goals to be a success this year (one pundit), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching Sesko at Leipzig: a powerful, fast racing car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: afforded the freedom to rampage but also the leeway to miss. Partly this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in about the time it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most ruthless gap between the time and air he requires, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

We saw an example of this during the international break, when a viral chart conveniently stated that the player had been judged – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of football representatives. And of course, the press are by no means the only ones in such behavior. Club channels, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially operating along the identical rules, an environment deliberately nosed towards provocation.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to ourselves? Are we aware, on any level, what this infinite stream of irritation is doing to our minds? Separate from the essential weirdness of being a player in the center of this, knowing on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that each aspect about players is now basically content, commodity, open-source property to be repackaged and traded.

And yes, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a major institution that must always be producing the strong emotions. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of opinion most visibly and cruelly observed at this time of year, about a month after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been coveting players, praising them, salivating over them. Now, only a handful of games later, many of those very players are now being disdained as broken goods. Is it time to be concerned about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the point of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that he meets Liverpool on the weekend: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at home in the league and yet in their own state of perceived turmoil, like submitting a missing person’s report on someone who popped to the store half an hour ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah past his prime. Alexander Isak waste of money. The coach bald.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has started to replace football the actual game, to influence the way we watch it, an whole competition repivoted around talking points and reaction, something that happens in the backdrop while we scroll through our phones, unable to detach from the saline drip of takes and more takes. It may be this player bearing the brunt at present. However, everyone is sacrificing a part of the experience here.