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Imagine this: a happy Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Now, place that with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed a sitter. Don't worry locating an actual photo of him missing; context is the enemy. Then, include some goal stats in a large, silly font. Remember the emojis. Post the image everywhere.

Would you mention that Højlund's tally features strikes in the Champions League while Sesko does not compete in Europe? Of course not. Nor will you highlight that several of the Dane's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and creates many more chances. If you run social media for a major brand, raw engagement is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

So the wheel of content spins. Your next task is to sift through a 44-minute podcast featuring Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "strange". Just before, where he qualifies his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. No one needs that. Simply ensure "strange" and "the player" are paired in the headline. The audience will be furious.

This Time of Potential and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has long been one of my preferred periods to observe football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, squads and strategies are newly formed, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the season ahead are staking their claims. The transfer window is closed. No one is talking about the quadruple yet. All teams are still in the game. At this precise point, all is possibility.

Yet, for similar reasons, this period has long been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is resurgent. The German talent has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league right now? We need a decision now.

The Player as Patient Zero

In many ways, Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player caught between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The need to withhold final conclusions, to let layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to mature. And the imperative to generate 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 offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's time at Manchester United to date. The guy has started on four occasions in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and had a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we analysing? Nor will I attempt to duplicate the pundits' 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 season (one pundit), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at Leipzig: a big, fast racing car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: afforded the license to rampage but also the leeway to miss. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most ruthless gulf between the time and air he needs, and the time and air he is going to get.

We saw an example of this over the national team pause, when a widely shared infographic handily stated that Sesko had been deemed – decisively – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the press are by no means the only ones in this. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: everybody with a vested interest is now essentially aligned along the same principles, an environment explicitly geared for controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to ourselves? Do we realize, on some level, what this endless stream of irritation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the middle of this, knowing on some surreal butterfly-effect level that every single thing about players is now basically content, commodity, open-source property to be repackaged and traded.

And yes, in part this is because United are United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the cycle, a major institution that must constantly be producing the strong emotions. But also, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of judgment most clearly and cruelly glimpsed at this time of year, about a month after the window has closed. All summer long we have been coveting players, praising them, drooling over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, many of those very players are already being dismissed as failures. Is it time to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that Sesko meets Liverpool on Sunday: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at home 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 shops 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Their star past his prime. The striker an expensive flop. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football itself, to influence the way we watch it, an entire sport reoriented around discussion topics and reaction, something that happens in the backdrop while we browse through our devices, incapable to detach from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. Perhaps this player taking the hit right now. But in a way, everyone is sacrificing something in this process.