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Imagine the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Now, place it with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he just missed a sitter. Don't worry finding an actual photo of that miss; context is the enemy. Now, add some goal stats in a large, silly font. Don't forget some emoticons. Post it everywhere.

Would you point out that Højlund's goal count includes strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko does not compete in continental tournaments? Of course not. Nor would you highlight that several of the Dane's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is much stronger 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 featuring Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where Schmeichel qualifies his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. No one wants that. Simply ensure "weird" and "the player" appear together in the title. People will be furious.

This Time of Potential and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my favourite times to watch football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are newly formed, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the coming months are planting their flags. The summer market is shut. 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 least favourite times to read about football. For while no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. The German talent has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league right now? We need a decision now.

Sesko as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to delay definitive judgment, to let technical development and tactical sophistication to mature. And the imperative to generate instant verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and memes, context-free condemnations and pointless contrasts, a puzzle that can not truly be solved.

I do not propose to offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. The guy has started on four occasions in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and had a mere of 116 touches. What precisely are we evaluating? Nor do I propose to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts argue passionately on a podcast over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be a success this season (one pundit), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I loved watching him at his former club: a big, fast sports car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: 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 roughly the duration it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most pitiless gulf between the time and air he requires, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

We saw a case of this during the international break, when a widely shared infographic handily stated that Sesko had been deemed – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a survey of football representatives. And of course, the press are by no means alone in such behavior. Club channels, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with a vested interest is now essentially aligned along the identical rules, an ecosystem deliberately geared for provocation.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to ourselves? Do we realize, on some level, what this endless sluice of irritation is doing to our minds? Separate from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the center of it all, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about players is now basically content, commodity, open-source property to be packaged and exchanged.

Indeed, in part this is because United are United, the corpse that continues to feed the narrative, a major institution that must constantly be producing the strong emotions. But also, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of judgment most clearly and harshly observed at this season, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been desiring players, eulogising them, salivating over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are now being disdained as broken goods. Should we start to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker wise? What was the point of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that he faces Liverpool on Sunday: a team at once 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 popped to the store half an hour ago. Too open. Their star finished. Alexander Isak waste of money. The coach losing his hair.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has started to replace football the actual game, to inflect the way we watch it, an whole competition repivoted around discussion topics and reaction, an activity that happens in the backdrop while we scroll through our devices, incapable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and further hot takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit at present. However, we're all losing something in this process.