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Picture the following: a happy the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Now, place that with a dejected Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, looking as if he just missed a sitter. Don't bother locating a real picture of that miss; background information is your adversary. Then, add some goal stats in a large, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Post the image everywhere.

Will you mention that Højlund's goal count includes scores in the Champions League while his counterpart does not compete in continental tournaments? Certainly not. And will you note that several of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that his national team is much stronger to Slovenia and creates far more scoring opportunities. If you manage social media for a large outlet, pure engagement is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of online material spins. The next job is to sift through a 44-minute interview featuring Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where Schmeichel prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. Nobody needs that. Simply ensure "strange" and "Sesko" appear together in the title. The audience will be furious.

This Time of Promise and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my preferred times to watch football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, squads and strategies are still fresh, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the season ahead are staking their claims. The summer market is shut. Nobody is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are in contention. At this precise point, anything is possible.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my least favourite times to consume news on 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 at this moment? We need an answer now.

The Player as Patient Zero

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The need to delay final conclusions, allowing technical development and strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to generate permanent definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, out-of-context criticisms and meaningless comparisons, a square that can never truly be circled.

I do not propose to provide a substantive evaluation of Sesko's time at United to date. The guy has been in the lineup on four occasions in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and taken a grand total of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? Nor will I attempt to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts argue passionately on a popular show over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this season (Neville), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I loved watching Sesko at Leipzig: a powerful, screeching racing car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: afforded the license to attack but also the freedom to fail. Partly this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in about the time it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most pitiless gulf between the patience and space he needs, and the opportunity he is going to get.

There was a case of this during the international break, when a viral chart handily stated that the player had been judged – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, 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 essentially aligned along the same principles, an environment deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to ourselves? Are we aware, on any level, what this infinite sluice of irritation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of playing in the middle of it all, aware on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that each aspect about players is now basically content, product, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

Indeed, in part this is because United are United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the cycle, a major institution that must always be producing the strong emotions. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of judgment most clearly and harshly observed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been coveting footballers, praising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those same players are already being dismissed as broken goods. Is it time to worry about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker necessary? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that Sesko faces Liverpool on Sunday: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at home in the Premier League and somehow in their own state of feverish crisis, like filing a missing person’s report on someone who popped to the store half an hour ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah finished. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Perhaps we have failed to understand 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, something that happens in the backdrop while we browse through our devices, unable to detach from the saline drip of opinions and further hot takes. It may be Sesko bearing the brunt right now. However, everyone is losing a part of the experience in this process.