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Imagine this: a smiling the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Now, juxtapose that with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, appearing like he's missed an open goal. Do not worry locating an actual photo of that miss; background information is your adversary. Now, add some goal stats in a big, comical font. Remember some emoticons. Share it everywhere.

Will you point out that Højlund's goal count includes strikes in the premier European competition while his counterpart isn't playing 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 much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and generates many more scoring opportunities. You manage social media for a major brand, pure interaction is your livelihood, Manchester United are the prime target, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the cycle of content turns. The next job is to sift through a 44-minute podcast with Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where he qualifies his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. No one needs that. Simply ensure "strange" and "the player" are paired in the title. The audience will be outraged.

This Time of Potential and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my favourite periods to watch football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, squads and strategies are still fresh, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the coming months are staking their claims. The transfer window is shut. Nobody is talking about the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are still in the game. At this precise point, all is possibility.

However, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my most disliked times to read about football. Because although no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is resurgent. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league at this moment? We need an answer now.

The Player as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player caught between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The need to withhold final conclusions, to let layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to mature. And the demand to produce permanent verdicts, a constant stream of takes and memes, context-free criticisms and meaningless contrasts, a puzzle that can never truly be solved.

I do not propose to offer a in-depth analysis of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. He has started four times in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and taken a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we analysing? And do I propose to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel thrillingly on a podcast over whether he needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this season (one pundit), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I enjoyed watching him at Leipzig: a powerful, screeching sports car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: afforded the freedom to rampage but also the leeway to miss. Partly this is why Manchester 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 short advertisement, the club with the largest and most ruthless gap between the patience and space he requires, and the time and air he is going to get.

There was a case of this during the international break, when a widely shared infographic handily informed us that the player had been judged – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a survey of 20 agents. Naturally, the press are by no means alone in this. Club channels, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: everybody with a vested interest is now essentially operating along the identical rules, an ecosystem deliberately nosed towards provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to ourselves? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite sluice of aggravation is doing to our brains? Separate from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the middle of it all, knowing on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about players is now basically content, product, open-source property to be packaged and exchanged.

Indeed, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that continues to feed the cycle, a big club that must constantly be generating the strong emotions. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, a swing of opinion most visibly and cruelly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been coveting footballers, praising them, salivating over them. Now, only a handful of games later, a lot of those same players are already being disdained as broken goods. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need their striker wise? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that Sesko faces Liverpool on Sunday: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at home in the league and somehow in their own state of perceived turmoil, like filing a a report on a person who went to the shops half an hour ago. Too open. Their star finished. The striker waste of money. The coach losing his hair.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has started to replace football itself, to influence the way we view it, an whole competition repivoted around talking points 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 more takes. It may be this player taking the hit at present. However, everyone is losing a part of the experience in this process.