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Imagine the following: a happy Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Now, place it with a dejected the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed a sitter. Do not worry finding an actual photo of that miss; context is your adversary. Now, add some goal stats in a big, comical font. Remember the emojis. Share it across all platforms.

Will you mention that Højlund's goal count includes scores in the Champions League while Sesko isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. Nor will you highlight that several of the Dane's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is much stronger to Slovenia and generates far more scoring opportunities. If you manage online for a major brand, raw interaction is your livelihood, Manchester United are the prime target, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

Thus the wheel of content spins. The next job is to scan a 44-minute interview with the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "weird". Just before, where Schmeichel qualifies his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. No one wants that. Simply make sure "strange" and "the player" appear together in the headline. The audience will be outraged.

This Time of Promise and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has long been one of my preferred times to observe football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, squads and strategies are still fresh, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the season ahead are planting their flags. The transfer window is shut. Nobody is talking about the quadruple yet. Everyone are in contention. At this precise point, all is possibility.

Yet, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league right now? We need a decision immediately.

The Player as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to withhold final conclusions, allowing technical development and tactical sophistication to mature. And the imperative to produce permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and memes, out-of-context condemnations and meaningless contrasts, a puzzle that can never truly be solved.

It is not my aim to offer a substantive evaluation of Sesko's time at United so far. He has started on four occasions in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and taken a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we evaluating? And will I attempt to replicate the pundits' notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts argue passionately on a popular show over whether he needs ten strikes to be a success this season (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at Leipzig: a powerful, screeching sports car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: given the freedom to rampage but also the freedom to miss. And in part this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most ruthless gap between the time and air he requires, and the time and air he is going to get.

We saw a case of this during the national team pause, when a viral chart handily informed us that Sesko had been deemed – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the media are by no means the only ones in this. Team social media, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: everybody with a vested interest is now essentially aligned along the identical rules, an ecosystem deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this endless stream of irritation is doing to our minds? Separate from the essential weirdness of playing in the middle of this, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that every single thing about them is now basically material, commodity, public property to be repackaged and traded.

And yes, partly this is because United are United, the entity that keeps nourishing the cycle, a big club that must always be generating the big feelings. However, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of judgment most clearly and harshly observed at this season, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been desiring footballers, eulogising them, salivating over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, many of those same players are already being disdained as failures. Is it time to worry about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need their striker necessary? What was the point of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that he meets their rivals on Sunday: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the league and yet in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like filing a a report on a person who popped to the store half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Their star finished. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. The coach bald.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football itself, to influence the way we view it, an whole competition reoriented around talking points and immediate responses, an activity that happens in the background while we browse through our phones, incapable to detach from the saline drip of takes and more takes. Perhaps Sesko taking the hit right now. But in a way, everyone is sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.