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Picture this: a smiling Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Now, place it with a dejected Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, looking as if he's missed a sitter. Do not bother locating an actual photo of him missing; background information is your adversary. Now, add statistics in a big, comical font. Remember some emoticons. Share the image everywhere.

Will you point out that Højlund's tally features strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko does not compete in Europe? Of course not. And would you note that four of the Dane's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that his national team is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and generates many more scoring opportunities. If you manage social media for a major brand, pure engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and context is your sworn enemy.

Thus the cycle of online material turns. The next job is to sift through a 44-minute interview featuring Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he qualifies his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. Nobody needs that. Simply ensure "weird" and "the player" appear together in the title. The audience will be furious.

The Season of Potential and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my preferred times to observe football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, squads and strategies are still fresh, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the coming months 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.

However, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has also 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. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league right now? We need an answer now.

The Player as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player caught between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to delay final conclusions, allowing technical development and strategic understanding to develop. And the imperative to produce permanent verdicts, a constant stream of opinions and memes, out-of-context condemnations and meaningless contrasts, a square that can never truly be circled.

I do not propose to provide a substantive evaluation of Sesko's time at United to date. He has started four times in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and had a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we analysing? Nor do I propose to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits argue passionately on a podcast over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be a success this season (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I loved watching him 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. And in part 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 load a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most pitiless gulf between the time and air he needs, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

There was a case of this over the international break, when a widely shared infographic handily stated that the player had been judged – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a poll of football representatives. Naturally, the media are not alone in this. Team social media, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of fake followers: all parties with skin in the game is now essentially aligned along the same principles, an ecosystem deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to ourselves? Do we realize, on any level, what this infinite sluice of aggravation is doing to our minds? Separate from the essential weirdness of playing in the center of it all, knowing on some surreal butterfly-effect level that each aspect about them is now basically material, product, open-source property to be packaged and exchanged.

And yes, in part this is because United are United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the cycle, a big club that must always be producing the big feelings. However, in part this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of judgment most clearly and harshly glimpsed at this season, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. All summer long we have been coveting players, praising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, many of those very 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?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that he meets Liverpool on Sunday: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at home in the Premier League and somehow in their own state of perceived turmoil, like submitting a a report on a person who went to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah past his prime. Alexander Isak waste of money. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has started to replace football the actual game, to influence the way we watch it, an entire sport repivoted around discussion topics and reaction, an activity that happens in the backdrop while we browse through our phones, unable to detach from the saline drip of takes and further hot takes. It may be Sesko bearing the brunt right now. However, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.