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Imagine this: a smiling Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, place that with a dejected Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, looking as if he's missed an open goal. Do not bother finding a real picture of him missing; context is your adversary. Now, include statistics in a big, comical font. Don't forget some emoticons. Post it everywhere.

Would you mention that Højlund's tally features scores in the Champions League while Sesko isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. Nor will you highlight that four of Højlund's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is far superior to Slovenia and generates far more scoring opportunities. You manage social media for a major brand, raw interaction is your livelihood, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

So the cycle of online material spins. Your next task is to scan a lengthy podcast featuring the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where Schmeichel prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. No one wants that. Just ensure "weird" and "the player" are paired in the headline. The audience will be outraged.

This Time of Promise and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has long been one of my preferred times to watch football. Leaves fall, winds shift, the teams and tactics are still fresh, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the season ahead are planting their flags. The transfer window is closed. No one is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. All teams are in contention. Right now, anything is possible.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. Because although no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league at this moment? We need a decision now.

Sesko 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, to let layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to generate permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, context-free condemnations and pointless contrasts, a square that can not truly be circled.

I do not propose to offer a substantive evaluation of Sesko's time at United to date. He has started on four occasions in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and taken a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we evaluating? And do I propose to replicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits argue passionately on a popular show over whether he needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this season (one pundit), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I enjoyed watching Sesko at his former club: a big, fast racing car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: afforded the license to rampage but also the leeway to fail. And in part this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in about the time it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most pitiless gap between the patience and space he requires, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

We saw an example of this over the national team pause, when a viral infographic conveniently stated that the player had been judged – decisively – the worst signing of the recent market by a survey of football representatives. And of course, the media are by no means alone in this. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially aligned along the same principles, an ecosystem deliberately geared for controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to us? Do we realize, on some level, what this endless sluice of aggravation is doing to our minds? Separate from the essential weirdness of playing in the middle of it all, knowing on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that each aspect about players is now essentially material, product, public property to be packaged and traded.

And yes, partly this is because United are United, the entity that keeps nourishing the narrative, a major institution that must always be generating the strong emotions. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of opinion most visibly and harshly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been coveting players, praising them, drooling over them. Now, just a few weeks in, many of those same players are now being disdained as broken goods. Is it time to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker wise? What was the point of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that he faces Liverpool on Sunday: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at home in the Premier League and somehow in their own situation of feverish crisis, like filing a a report on someone who popped to the store half an hour ago. Too open. Their star past his prime. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. The coach bald.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has started to replace football the actual game, to inflect the way we view it, an whole competition reoriented around discussion topics and immediate responses, an activity that happens in the backdrop while we browse through our devices, unable to detach from the constant flow of takes and more takes. It may be this player taking the hit at present. However, we're all sacrificing something here.