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Picture this: a smiling Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Next, place that with a dejected the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he's missed a sitter. Don't bother locating an actual photo of him missing; background information is the enemy. Then, include statistics in a big, silly font. Don't forget the emojis. Post the image across all platforms.

Will you mention that Højlund's tally includes strikes in the Champions League 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 his national team is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and generates far more chances. You run online for a large outlet, pure engagement is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and context is the thing to avoid.

Thus the cycle of content turns. The next job is to scan a 44-minute interview with Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where Schmeichel prefaces his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. Nobody needs that. Just make sure "strange" and "the player" are paired in the headline. The audience will be furious.

The Season of Potential and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has long been one of my preferred times to watch football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, the teams and tactics are newly formed, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the coming months are planting their flags. The summer market is shut. No one is talking about the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are in contention. Right now, all is possibility.

However, for many of the same reasons, this period has long been one of my most disliked 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 best player in the league at this moment? We need an answer immediately.

The Player as Patient Zero

In many ways, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player caught between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to withhold final conclusions, to let layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to develop. And the imperative to produce instant verdicts, a constant stream of opinions and jokes, out-of-context criticisms and meaningless contrasts, a puzzle that can never truly be solved.

I do not propose to offer a substantive evaluation of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. He has been in the lineup on four occasions in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and had a mere of 116 touches. What precisely are we analysing? Nor will I attempt to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits argue thrillingly on a popular show over whether he needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this year (one pundit), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at his former club: a big, fast sports car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: given 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 watch a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most ruthless gulf between the time and air he needs, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

There was an example of this during the national team pause, when a viral chart conveniently informed us that the player had been judged – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a poll of football representatives. And of course, the press are by no means alone in such behavior. Club channels, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: everybody with a vested interest is now basically operating along the identical rules, an ecosystem explicitly geared for controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to ourselves? Are we aware, on some level, what this endless stream of irritation is doing to our brains? Separate from the essential weirdness of being a player in the middle of it all, aware on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that every single thing about them is now basically content, commodity, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, in part this is because United are United, the entity that continues to feed the cycle, a major institution that must always be generating the strong emotions. However, in part this is a temporary malaise, a swing of opinion most clearly and cruelly observed at this time of year, about a month after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been desiring footballers, eulogising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are already being dismissed as broken goods. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need their striker wise? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that Sesko meets their rivals on Sunday: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at home in the Premier League and somehow in their own state of feverish crisis, like submitting a missing person’s report on someone who went to the shops 30 minutes ago. Too open. Their star finished. The striker an expensive flop. Arne Slot bald.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has started to replace football the actual game, to influence the way we view it, an whole competition reoriented around discussion topics and immediate responses, something that occurs in the backdrop while we scroll through our devices, unable to detach from the saline drip of takes and further hot takes. It may be this player bearing the brunt right now. But in a way, we're all sacrificing something in this process.