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Picture this: a smiling Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Next, juxtapose that with a dejected Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Don't bother finding a real picture of him missing; context is your adversary. Now, include some goal stats in a large, comical font. Remember the emojis. Share it across all platforms.

Would you point out that Højlund's goal count features strikes in the Champions League while his counterpart isn't playing in continental tournaments? Of course not. And would you highlight that several of the Dane's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is much stronger to Slovenia and generates far more chances. You run online for a major brand, pure interaction is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

So the wheel of content turns. The next job is to sift through a lengthy interview with Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where Schmeichel prefaces his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. Nobody needs that. Simply ensure "weird" and "the player" are paired in the headline. People will be outraged.

This Time of Promise and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my favourite periods to observe football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, the teams and tactics are still fresh, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the coming months are planting their flags. The summer market is shut. No one is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are in contention. At this precise point, all is possibility.

However, for similar reasons, this period has long been one of my least favourite times to read about football. For while no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is resurgent. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league at this moment? We need a decision immediately.

The Player as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The need to withhold definitive judgment, to let layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to develop. And the demand to produce instant definitive judgment, a constant stream of opinions and jokes, context-free criticisms and meaningless contrasts, a square that can never truly be solved.

It is not my aim to offer a in-depth analysis of Sesko's time at Manchester United so far. The guy has started on four occasions in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and taken a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we analysing? And will I attempt to replicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits argue thrillingly on a podcast over whether he needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this year (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I enjoyed watching him at Leipzig: a powerful, fast sports car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: afforded 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 at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in about the time it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most ruthless gap between the time and air he requires, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

We saw a case of this during the international break, when a widely shared chart handily stated that Sesko had been judged – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a poll of football representatives. And of course, the press are not alone in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: everybody with skin in the game is now basically aligned along the same principles, an environment deliberately geared for controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to ourselves? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite stream of aggravation is doing to our minds? Separate from the inherent strangeness of playing in the middle of this, knowing on a bizarre chain-reaction level that every single thing about them is now essentially material, product, public property to be packaged and exchanged.

And yes, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the cycle, a big club that must always be generating the big feelings. However, in part this is a temporary malaise, a swing of judgment most clearly and harshly observed at this season, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been coveting players, eulogising them, drooling over them. Now, only a handful of games later, a lot of those very players are already being disdained as failures. Should we start to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the point of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that he meets their rivals on the weekend: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and yet in their own state of perceived turmoil, like submitting a a report on someone who popped to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah past his prime. Alexander Isak waste of money. The coach bald.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to influence the way we view it, an whole competition repivoted around discussion topics and immediate responses, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we scroll through our devices, incapable to disconnect from the saline drip of takes and more takes. Perhaps Sesko taking the hit right now. But in a way, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.