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Picture the following: a happy the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Next, place it with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, looking as if he's missed an open goal. Don't worry locating a real picture of that miss; context is your adversary. Now, include some goal stats in a big, silly font. Don't forget some emoticons. Post it everywhere.

Would you point out that Højlund's tally features scores in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in Europe? Certainly not. And would you highlight that several of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and creates far more scoring opportunities. If you manage social media for a large outlet, pure engagement is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and context is the thing to avoid.

So the wheel of content spins. The next job is to sift through a lengthy interview with Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "weird". Just before, where he prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. Nobody wants that. Simply ensure "weird" and "Sesko" appear together in the title. People will be furious.

This Time of Promise and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my preferred times to observe football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, squads and strategies are newly formed, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the season ahead are staking their claims. The transfer window is shut. No one is mentioning the quadruple yet. Everyone are still in the game. At this precise point, anything is possible.

However, for similar reasons, this period has also been one of my least favourite times to read about football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is reborn. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league right now? We need an answer now.

Sesko as Patient Zero

In many ways, 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 strategic understanding to develop. And the imperative to generate instant verdicts, a constant stream of takes and memes, context-free condemnations and meaningless contrasts, a puzzle that can never truly be circled.

I do not propose to provide a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's time at United so far. He has started four times in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and taken a grand total of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? And do I propose to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts argue passionately on a podcast over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this season (one pundit), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I loved watching him at Leipzig: a powerful, fast racing car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: afforded the license to rampage but also the freedom to fail. Partly this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most pitiless gulf between the patience and space he needs, and the time and air he is going to get.

There was an example of this during the international break, when a widely shared chart conveniently stated that the player had been judged – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a survey of football representatives. And of course, the press are by no means the only ones in this. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with skin in the game is now basically operating along the same principles, an environment deliberately nosed towards provocation.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this endless sluice of aggravation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of playing in the middle of this, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about them is now essentially content, product, open-source property to be packaged and exchanged.

And yes, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that keeps nourishing the cycle, a big club that must constantly be generating the big feelings. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a swing of judgment most visibly and cruelly glimpsed at this time of year, about a month after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been coveting footballers, eulogising them, salivating over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are now being disdained as failures. Should we start to worry about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker necessary? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that he meets Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the league and yet in their own state of feverish crisis, like filing a a report on someone who popped to the store half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah past his prime. Alexander Isak waste of money. The coach losing his hair.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to inflect the way we view it, an entire sport reoriented around discussion topics and reaction, an activity that happens in the backdrop while we browse through our phones, unable to disconnect from the saline drip of takes and more takes. Perhaps this player taking the hit right now. However, everyone is losing a part of the experience in this process.