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Picture the following: a happy Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, juxtapose it with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he's missed an open goal. Do not worry finding an actual photo of that miss; context is the enemy. Now, include statistics in a big, comical font. Don't forget some emoticons. Post it across all platforms.

Will you mention that Højlund's tally features strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in Europe? Of course not. Nor would you note that four of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and creates many more chances. You manage online for a large outlet, pure interaction is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the prime target, and context is your sworn enemy.

So the wheel of content turns. Your next task is to sift through a lengthy podcast with Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where he qualifies his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. Nobody needs that. Simply ensure "strange" and "Sesko" appear together in the headline. People will be furious.

The Season of Potential and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my preferred times to watch football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are still fresh, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the season ahead are planting their flags. The transfer window is closed. Nobody is talking about the quadruple yet. Everyone are in contention. Right now, all is possibility.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, this period has long been one of my most disliked times to read about football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league right now? We need a decision now.

Sesko as Patient Zero

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to delay final conclusions, to let technical development and strategic understanding to mature. And the demand to generate instant verdicts, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, out-of-context criticisms and pointless contrasts, a square that can not truly be circled.

It is not my aim to provide a substantive analysis of Sesko's stint at United so far. He has been in the lineup four times in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and had a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we evaluating? Nor will I attempt to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits duel passionately on a popular show over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this year (one pundit), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I loved watching Sesko at Leipzig: a powerful, fast sports car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: afforded the license to rampage but also the freedom to miss. And in part this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most ruthless gulf between the time and air he needs, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

We saw an example of this during the national team pause, when a viral infographic handily stated that the player had been judged – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a survey of football representatives. And of course, the press are by no means alone in this. Club channels, influencers, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: all parties with skin in the game is now essentially operating along the same principles, an environment deliberately geared for controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to us? Are we aware, on any level, what this endless stream of aggravation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of playing in the center of this, knowing on some surreal butterfly-effect level that every single thing about them is now essentially material, commodity, 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 always be generating the big feelings. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of judgment most visibly and harshly glimpsed at this time of year, about a month after the window has closed. All summer long we have been desiring footballers, praising them, salivating over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, a lot of those same players are already being dismissed as failures. Is it time to worry about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that Sesko meets their rivals on the weekend: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the Premier League and somehow in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like filing a missing person’s report on a person who popped to the store half an hour ago. Too open. Their star finished. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. The coach losing his hair.

Maybe 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 whole competition repivoted around talking points and immediate responses, something that happens in the background while we browse through our devices, unable to detach from the constant flow of takes and more takes. It may be this player bearing the brunt at present. However, we're all sacrificing something in this process.