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Imagine this: a happy Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, place that with a dejected the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he just missed a sitter. Don't worry finding a real picture of that miss; background information is your adversary. Then, include statistics in a big, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Post it everywhere.

Would you point out that Højlund's goal count includes scores in the Champions League while his counterpart isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. Nor will 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 creates many more chances. If you run social media for a major brand, raw interaction is your livelihood, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

Thus the cycle of content turns. Your next task is to scan a 44-minute interview featuring the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. No one wants that. Just make sure "strange" and "the player" are paired in the headline. People will be outraged.

The Season of Potential and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has long been one of my favourite times to observe football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, squads and strategies are still fresh, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the season ahead are staking their claims. The transfer window is shut. Nobody is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are still in the game. Right now, anything is possible.

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, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is reborn. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? We need a decision immediately.

Sesko as The Prime Example

In many ways, Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player caught between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to delay definitive judgment, allowing layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to mature. And the demand to produce permanent definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, out-of-context condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a puzzle that can never truly be solved.

I do not propose to provide a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. The guy has started on four occasions in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and had a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we analysing? And do I propose to duplicate the pundits' notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits argue thrillingly on a popular show over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be a success this year (Neville), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching Sesko at Leipzig: a powerful, fast sports car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: given the license to attack but also the freedom to miss. Partly this is why United feels like the cruellest 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 pitiless gulf between the time and air he needs, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

We saw an example of this during the national team pause, when a widely shared chart handily stated that the player had been deemed – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the media are not the only ones in this. Club channels, influencers, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: all parties with a vested interest is now basically aligned along the same principles, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to us? Do we realize, on some level, what this infinite sluice of aggravation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the center of this, aware on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that every single thing about players is now essentially material, product, public property to be repackaged and traded.

Indeed, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that keeps nourishing the cycle, a major institution that must constantly be generating the strong emotions. However, partly this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of judgment most visibly and harshly glimpsed at this season, about a month after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been coveting footballers, praising them, salivating over them. Now, only a handful of games later, a lot of those same players are now being dismissed as failures. Is it time to worry about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the point of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting 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 situation of feverish crisis, like submitting a a report on someone who went to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah past his prime. The striker waste of money. The coach bald.

Perhaps 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 watch it, an entire sport repivoted around talking points and immediate responses, something that happens in the backdrop while we scroll through our devices, incapable to disconnect from the saline drip of takes and further hot takes. It may be Sesko bearing the brunt right now. But in a way, everyone is losing something in this process.