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Imagine the following: a happy the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Next, place it with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed a sitter. Do not worry finding a real picture of him missing; context is your adversary. Now, include some goal stats in a large, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Post the image across all platforms.

Would you mention that Højlund's goal count includes strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. Nor will you highlight that four of Højlund's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and generates many more chances. You run social media for a large outlet, pure engagement is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and context is your sworn enemy.

So the cycle of online material turns. Your next task is to sift through a lengthy podcast with Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he prefaces his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. Nobody needs that. Just ensure "weird" and "the player" are paired in the title. People will be outraged.

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, the teams and tactics are newly formed, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the season ahead are staking their claims. The transfer window is shut. Nobody is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. All teams are still in the game. Right now, all is possibility.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn 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 reborn. The German talent has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league right now? We need an answer immediately.

Sesko as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The need to withhold final conclusions, to let layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to develop. And the imperative to generate instant verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, out-of-context criticisms and pointless contrasts, a square that can not truly be circled.

It is not my aim to offer a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's stint at United so far. He has been in the lineup four times in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and had a mere of 116 touches. What exactly are we evaluating? And will I attempt to duplicate the pundits' notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits argue passionately on a podcast over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be a success this year (one pundit), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

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 abilities: given the freedom to rampage but also the freedom to fail. And in part this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in roughly the duration it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the widest 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 international break, when a viral infographic handily stated that Sesko had been deemed – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the media are not alone in this. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: everybody with a vested interest is now basically operating along the same principles, an ecosystem deliberately geared for provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to ourselves? Do we realize, on any level, what this endless sluice of aggravation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of playing in the center of this, aware on some surreal butterfly-effect level that every single thing about players is now essentially content, product, public property to be repackaged and traded.

And yes, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that keeps nourishing 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 opinion most clearly and cruelly observed at this season, about a month after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been desiring players, praising them, drooling over them. Now, only a handful of games later, many of those very players are now being disdained as broken goods. Should we start to worry about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that Sesko faces their rivals on the weekend: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at home in the Premier League and yet in their own situation of feverish crisis, like filing a missing person’s report on someone who went to the store half an hour ago. Too open. Their star finished. Alexander Isak waste of money. The coach bald.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to influence the way we view it, an entire sport repivoted around talking points and reaction, an activity that happens in the backdrop while we browse through our devices, incapable to detach from the constant flow 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.