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Imagine the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Now, juxtapose it with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, appearing like he's missed an open goal. Don't worry locating an actual photo of that miss; context is the enemy. Now, include some goal stats in a large, silly font. Don't forget some emoticons. Post the image across all platforms.

Will you point out that Højlund's tally features scores in the premier European competition while his counterpart does not compete in continental tournaments? Certainly not. Nor will you highlight that several of the Dane's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is far superior to Slovenia and generates far more chances. You run social media for a major brand, pure engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the prime target, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

So the cycle of online material spins. Your next task is to sift through a 44-minute interview with the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where Schmeichel prefaces his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. Nobody needs that. Just make sure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. People will be furious.

The Season of Promise and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has long been one of my favourite periods to watch football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, squads and strategies are still fresh, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the coming months are staking their claims. The transfer window is closed. No one is mentioning the quadruple yet. Everyone are still in the game. Right now, anything is possible.

However, for similar reasons, this period has also been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. For while nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league at this moment? Please an answer now.

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 final conclusions, allowing layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to mature. And the demand to produce instant verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, out-of-context condemnations and pointless contrasts, a puzzle that can not truly be circled.

It is not my aim to provide a substantive analysis of Sesko's time at United to date. He has started on four occasions in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and had a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely 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 of England's leading pundits argue passionately on a popular show over whether he needs 10 goals to be a success this season (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I enjoyed watching him at Leipzig: a powerful, fast sports car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: given the license to rampage but also the leeway to fail. Partly 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 load a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most ruthless gulf between the time and air he needs, and the opportunity he is going to get.

We saw a case of this during the national team pause, when a widely shared chart handily informed us that Sesko had been deemed – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the media are by no means alone in this. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with a vested interest is now essentially aligned along the same principles, an ecosystem explicitly geared for provocation.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to ourselves? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite stream 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 them is now essentially material, commodity, public property to be repackaged and exchanged.

And yes, 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, partly this is a temporary malaise, a swing of opinion most clearly and harshly observed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been desiring players, eulogising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those same players are already being disdained as broken goods. Should we start to worry about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need their striker wise? What was the point of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that Sesko faces their rivals on the weekend: 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 missing person’s report on someone who went to the store half an hour ago. Too open. Their star past his prime. The striker an expensive flop. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football itself, to inflect the way we watch it, an whole competition repivoted around discussion topics and reaction, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we browse through our devices, incapable to disconnect from the constant flow of opinions and further hot takes. Perhaps this player bearing the brunt at present. However, we're all sacrificing something here.