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Picture the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, place it with a dejected Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, appearing like he's missed an open goal. Do not worry finding a real picture of him missing; background information is your adversary. Then, add some goal stats in a big, silly font. Remember the emojis. Post it everywhere.

Will you mention that Højlund's tally includes strikes in the Champions League while his counterpart isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. Nor would you note that four of the Dane's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that his national team is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and generates far more scoring opportunities. You manage online for a large outlet, raw interaction is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and context is your sworn enemy.

So the cycle of content spins. Your next task is to scan a 44-minute podcast with the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where he prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. Nobody wants that. Simply make sure "strange" and "Sesko" appear together in the headline. The audience will be outraged.

This Time 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 everything is beginning to form. Key players of the coming months are staking their claims. The summer market is closed. No one is talking about the quadruple yet. Everyone are still in the game. At this precise point, anything is possible.

Yet, for similar reasons, this period has long been one of my least favourite times to read about football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is resurgent. The German talent has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league at this moment? We need an answer now.

Sesko as Patient Zero

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to withhold definitive judgment, to let technical development and strategic understanding to mature. And the imperative to produce permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of opinions and memes, out-of-context criticisms and pointless contrasts, a puzzle that can not truly be solved.

I do not propose to provide a substantive evaluation of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. He has started on four occasions in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and had 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 "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel thrillingly on a popular show over whether Sesko 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, fast racing car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: afforded the license to attack but also the leeway to miss. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most ruthless gulf between the time and air he needs, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

There was an example of this over the national team pause, when a viral infographic conveniently informed us that the player had been deemed – decisively – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a survey of football representatives. And of course, the press are not the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of fake followers: everybody with skin in the game is now basically operating along the identical rules, an ecosystem deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to ourselves? Do we realize, on any level, what this infinite stream of irritation is doing to our minds? Separate from the essential weirdness of playing in the center of it all, knowing on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that every single thing about players is now basically material, product, open-source property to be packaged and exchanged.

Indeed, in part this is because United are United, the entity that continues to feed the cycle, a big club that must constantly be producing the big feelings. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of judgment most visibly and cruelly observed at this time of year, about a month after the window has closed. All summer long we have been desiring footballers, eulogising them, drooling over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are already being dismissed as broken goods. Should we start to worry about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the point of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that Sesko meets Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at home in the Premier League and somehow in their own state of perceived turmoil, like submitting a missing person’s report on someone who went to the shops half an hour ago. Too open. Their star finished. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. The coach bald.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to inflect the way we view it, an whole competition repivoted around talking points and reaction, an activity that happens in the backdrop while we browse through our phones, incapable to detach from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. Perhaps this player taking the hit right now. But in a way, we're all losing a part of the experience here.