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Imagine the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, place that with a dejected the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed a sitter. Do not worry locating an actual photo of that miss; context is the enemy. Now, include statistics in a large, silly font. Don't forget the emojis. Share the image across all platforms.

Will you point out that Højlund's goal count includes strikes in the Champions League while his counterpart isn't playing in continental tournaments? Of course not. Nor will you highlight that four of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that his national team is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and generates many more scoring opportunities. If you manage social media for a major brand, raw engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and context is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of content turns. The next job is to scan a lengthy interview featuring the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he qualifies his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. Nobody needs that. Simply make sure "strange" and "Sesko" appear together in the headline. The audience will be furious.

The Season of Potential and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has long been one of my favourite periods to watch football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are still fresh, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the coming months are planting their flags. The transfer window is closed. No one is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are in contention. At this precise point, anything is possible.

However, for many of the same reasons, this period has also been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. For while nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. 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 an answer now.

The Player as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to delay definitive judgment, allowing technical development and strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to produce instant definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, out-of-context condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a square that can never truly be solved.

I do not propose to offer a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's time at United so far. He has been in the lineup four times in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and taken a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we evaluating? Nor will I attempt to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits argue thrillingly on a popular show over whether he needs ten strikes to be a success this year (one pundit), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at his former club: a powerful, fast sports car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: afforded the license to attack but also the leeway to fail. 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 handed down in about the time it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most ruthless gulf between the patience and space he requires, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

There was an example of this over the national team pause, when a viral infographic handily stated that Sesko had been judged – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a poll of football representatives. And of course, the media are by no means the only ones in such behavior. Club channels, influencers, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: everybody with skin in the game is now basically aligned along the same principles, an ecosystem deliberately geared for provocation.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to ourselves? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite sluice of aggravation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of playing in the middle of this, knowing on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that every single thing about players is now essentially content, product, public property to be repackaged and traded.

And yes, partly this is because United are United, the entity that continues to feed the narrative, a big club that must always be producing the strong emotions. However, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of opinion most clearly and cruelly glimpsed at this season, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been desiring footballers, eulogising them, drooling over them. Now, only a handful of games later, a lot of those very players are already being dismissed as failures. Is it time to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that he faces Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at home in the Premier League and somehow in their own state of feverish crisis, like filing a missing person’s report on a person who went to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah past his prime. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, 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 scroll through our phones, incapable to disconnect from the constant flow of opinions and more takes. It may be Sesko bearing the brunt at present. But in a way, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.