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Picture the following: a happy the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Now, place that with a dejected Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he's missed a sitter. Do not bother locating an actual photo of him missing; background information is the enemy. Then, include statistics in a large, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Post it across all platforms.

Will you mention that Højlund's tally includes strikes in the premier European competition while his counterpart does not compete in Europe? Of course not. And would you note that several of the Dane's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is far superior to Slovenia and creates many more chances. You run online for a major brand, raw engagement is what pays the bills, United are the biggest draw, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the cycle of content spins. The next job is to sift through a lengthy podcast with the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". Just before, where Schmeichel prefaces his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. No one wants that. Simply make sure "strange" and "Sesko" appear together in the headline. The audience will be outraged.

The Season of Promise and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has long been one of my favourite periods to watch football. Leaves fall, winds shift, squads and strategies are still fresh, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the season ahead are staking their claims. The transfer window is shut. Nobody is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are still in the game. At this precise point, all is possibility.

Yet, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my least favourite times to read about football. For while 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 top performer in the league at this moment? Please an answer immediately.

Sesko as The Prime Example

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The need to withhold definitive judgment, to let layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to develop. And the imperative to generate permanent definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, out-of-context criticisms and pointless contrasts, a square that can never truly be solved.

It is not my aim to provide a in-depth analysis of Sesko's stint at United to date. The guy has started on four occasions in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and taken a grand total of 116 touches. What precisely are we evaluating? Nor do I propose to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel passionately on a popular show over whether he needs ten strikes to be a success this year (one pundit), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching Sesko at his former club: a big, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: afforded the freedom to attack but also the leeway to miss. And in part this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most pitiless gulf between the patience and space he needs, and the opportunity he is going to get.

We saw a case of this during the international break, when a viral infographic handily informed us that Sesko had been judged – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a survey of 20 agents. And of course, the press are not the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: all parties with a vested interest is now basically operating along the identical rules, an ecosystem deliberately geared for provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to us? Do we realize, on some level, what this infinite stream of aggravation is doing to our minds? Separate from the inherent strangeness of playing in the middle of it all, aware on some surreal chain-reaction level that every single thing about them is now essentially material, commodity, public property to be repackaged and traded.

Indeed, in part this is because United are United, the corpse that continues to feed the narrative, a big club that must constantly be generating the strong emotions. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of judgment most clearly and harshly observed at this season, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. All summer long we have been coveting footballers, eulogising them, drooling over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, a lot of those same players are already being disdained as broken goods. Is it time to be concerned about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker wise? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that he meets Liverpool on Sunday: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and somehow in their own state of perceived turmoil, like submitting a missing person’s report on a person who went to the shops half an hour ago. Too open. Their star past his prime. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. The coach losing his hair.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has started to replace football itself, to influence the way we view it, an entire sport reoriented around talking points and immediate responses, something that happens in the backdrop while we scroll through our devices, incapable to disconnect from the constant flow of opinions and more takes. Perhaps Sesko bearing the brunt right now. However, we're all losing something in this process.