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Imagine the following: a happy Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Next, place that with a dejected the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he's missed an open goal. Do not bother finding a real picture of him missing; background information is your adversary. Then, add some goal stats in a large, comical font. Remember the emojis. Share the image across all platforms.

Would you point out that Højlund's goal count includes scores in the Champions League while Sesko does not compete in Europe? Certainly not. Nor would you note that four of Højlund's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and creates many more scoring opportunities. If you manage online for a major brand, pure engagement is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the prime target, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the cycle of online material turns. The next job is to scan a lengthy interview with Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he prefaces his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. No one wants that. Simply make sure "strange" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. People will be furious.

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, the wind turns, squads and strategies are newly formed, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the coming months are planting their flags. The transfer window is closed. No one is talking about the quadruple yet. Everyone are in contention. Right now, anything is possible.

Yet, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. For while no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is reborn. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league right now? Please a decision immediately.

Sesko as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player caught between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The need 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 criticisms and pointless comparisons, a puzzle that can not truly be circled.

I do not propose to provide a in-depth analysis of Sesko's time at Manchester United to date. The guy has started on four occasions in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and had a mere of 116 touches. What precisely are we analysing? And will I attempt to duplicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel passionately on a podcast over whether he needs 10 goals to be a success this year (one pundit), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at Leipzig: a big, fast racing car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: given the license to rampage but also the freedom to miss. Partly this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in roughly the duration it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most pitiless gulf between the time and air he needs, and the time and air he is going to get.

We saw a case of this over the international break, when a viral chart handily stated that Sesko had been deemed – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a survey of football representatives. Naturally, the press are by no means the only ones in this. Club channels, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: everybody with a vested interest is now basically operating along the same principles, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this endless stream of aggravation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of playing in the center of this, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that every single thing about them is now basically content, product, public property to be packaged and exchanged.

And yes, in part this is because United are United, the corpse that continues to feed the cycle, a big club that must always be producing the strong emotions. However, partly this is a temporary malaise, a swing of opinion most clearly and cruelly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been desiring footballers, eulogising them, salivating over them. Now, only a handful of games later, a lot of those very players are already being dismissed as failures. Should we start to be concerned 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 faces their rivals on Sunday: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and yet in their own situation of feverish crisis, like submitting a missing person’s report on a person who went to the shops 30 minutes ago. Too open. Their star finished. Alexander Isak waste of money. The coach losing his hair.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has started to replace football itself, to influence the way we watch it, an whole competition repivoted around talking points and immediate responses, an activity that happens in the backdrop while we browse through our phones, unable to detach from the saline drip of opinions and further hot takes. Perhaps Sesko taking the hit at present. But in a way, everyone is sacrificing something in this process.