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Imagine the following: a smiling the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Now, place that with a dejected Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed a sitter. Do not bother locating an actual photo of him missing; background information is your adversary. Now, include statistics in a big, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Share it everywhere.

Will you mention that Højlund's goal count includes strikes in the premier European competition while his counterpart does not compete in Europe? Of course not. Nor would you note that four of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that his national team is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and generates far more scoring opportunities. If you manage online for a large outlet, pure engagement is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

Thus the wheel of content spins. Your next task is to scan a lengthy podcast with Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he prefaces his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. No one needs that. Simply make sure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. People will be furious.

This Time of Promise and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my preferred times to watch football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, squads and strategies are newly formed, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the season ahead are planting their flags. The summer market is closed. No one is mentioning the quadruple yet. All teams are in contention. Right now, anything is possible.

Yet, for similar reasons, this period has long been one of my most disliked times to read about 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 right now? Please an answer now.

Sesko as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The need to delay definitive judgment, to let layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to mature. And the demand to produce instant verdicts, a constant stream of opinions and memes, out-of-context criticisms and meaningless comparisons, a puzzle that can not truly be solved.

I do not propose to provide a in-depth analysis of Sesko's stint at United to date. The guy has started on four occasions in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and had a grand total of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? Nor will I attempt to duplicate the pundits' notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts argue passionately on a popular show over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this year (one pundit), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I loved watching Sesko at his former club: a big, fast racing car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: afforded the freedom to rampage but also the freedom to miss. Partly this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in roughly the duration it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most ruthless gap between the patience and space he requires, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

We saw an example of this over the international break, when a viral infographic conveniently stated that the player had been judged – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the media are by no means alone in this. Team social media, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: all parties with a vested interest is now basically operating along the identical rules, an ecosystem deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to ourselves? Are we aware, on any level, what this endless stream of irritation is doing to our minds? Separate from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the middle of it all, knowing on some surreal chain-reaction level that each aspect about players is now essentially material, product, public property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, in part this is because United are United, the entity that keeps nourishing the narrative, a major institution that must constantly be producing the big feelings. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a swing of opinion most clearly and cruelly observed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been desiring players, praising them, drooling over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, many of those same players are already being dismissed as failures. Should we start to worry about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the point of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that he meets their rivals on the weekend: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the league and yet in their own situation of feverish crisis, like submitting a a report on someone who went to the store half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Their star past his prime. Alexander Isak waste of money. The coach bald.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to inflect the way we watch it, an whole competition reoriented around talking points and reaction, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we browse through our phones, unable to detach from the constant flow of takes and more takes. It may be Sesko bearing the brunt at present. But in a way, everyone is sacrificing something here.