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Picture this: a smiling the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Now, juxtapose it with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, appearing like he's missed a sitter. Don't worry locating a real picture of that miss; context is your adversary. Then, add statistics in a large, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Share it everywhere.

Would you mention that Højlund's tally features strikes in the Champions League while his counterpart isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. And will you highlight that four of Højlund's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Slovenia and creates many more chances. You run social media for a large outlet, pure engagement is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

So the cycle of online material spins. The next job is to scan a 44-minute podcast with the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "strange". Just before, where Schmeichel prefaces his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. Nobody wants that. Simply make sure "strange" and "the player" are paired in the headline. The audience will be outraged.

The Season of Promise and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has long been one of my preferred periods to watch football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, squads and strategies are still fresh, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the season ahead are planting their flags. The summer market is closed. Nobody is mentioning the quadruple yet. All teams are in contention. At this precise point, all is possibility.

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

The Player as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The need to delay final conclusions, allowing layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to mature. And the demand to produce instant definitive judgment, a constant stream of takes and memes, context-free criticisms and pointless comparisons, a puzzle that can never truly be circled.

I do not propose to provide a substantive evaluation of Sesko's stint at United to date. The guy has been in the lineup 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 evaluating? And will I attempt to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts duel passionately on a podcast over whether he needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this season (one pundit), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I enjoyed watching him at Leipzig: a big, fast sports car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: given the license to attack but also the leeway to fail. And in part 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 about the time it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most ruthless gulf between the patience and space he requires, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

We saw an example of this over the international break, when a widely shared infographic conveniently stated that Sesko 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 the only ones in this. Club channels, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: everybody with a vested interest is now basically operating along the identical rules, an ecosystem deliberately geared for controversy.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to ourselves? Do we realize, on some level, what this infinite sluice of irritation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the center of it all, knowing on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that every single thing about players is now basically content, product, open-source property to be repackaged and traded.

And yes, in part this is because United are United, the entity that keeps nourishing the cycle, a big club that must constantly be generating the strong emotions. However, in part this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of opinion most clearly and cruelly observed at this season, about a month after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been desiring footballers, praising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are already 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 Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that he meets Liverpool on Sunday: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at home in the league and somehow in their own state of perceived turmoil, like submitting a a report on a person who popped to the store half an hour ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah finished. The striker an expensive flop. The coach losing his hair.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has started to replace football the actual game, to inflect the way we view it, an whole competition repivoted around discussion topics and immediate responses, an activity that occurs in the background while we browse through our devices, unable to detach from the saline drip of opinions and further hot takes. It may be this player bearing the brunt at present. But in a way, everyone is sacrificing a part of the experience here.