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Picture the following: a happy Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Now, juxtapose it with a dejected the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, appearing like he just missed an open goal. Don't worry locating an actual photo of him missing; context is your adversary. Now, include statistics in a big, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Share it across all platforms.

Would you mention that Højlund's tally includes strikes in the premier European competition while his counterpart does not compete in continental tournaments? Of course not. And will you highlight that four of Højlund's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that his national team is far superior to Slovenia and generates far more chances. If you manage online for a major brand, pure interaction is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the cycle of content turns. The next job is to sift through a lengthy interview with the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". Just before, where Schmeichel qualifies his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. Nobody wants that. Simply make sure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired in the headline. The audience will be furious.

This Time of Potential and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has long been one of my favourite periods to watch football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, squads and strategies are still fresh, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the season ahead are staking their claims. The summer market is shut. No one is talking about the quadruple yet. All teams are still in the game. At this precise point, all is possibility.

Yet, for similar reasons, this period has long been one of my most disliked times to read about football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? Please an answer now.

The Player as Patient Zero

In many ways, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The need to delay final conclusions, allowing layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to mature. And the imperative to produce permanent verdicts, a constant stream of takes and jokes, out-of-context criticisms and pointless comparisons, a puzzle that can not truly be solved.

It is not my aim to provide a substantive analysis of Sesko's stint at United so far. The guy has started four times 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 exactly are we evaluating? Nor will I attempt to duplicate 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 he needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this year (one pundit), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I loved watching him at Leipzig: a big, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: given the license to attack but also the freedom 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 roughly the duration it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most pitiless gulf between the time and air he requires, and the opportunity he is going to get.

We saw a case of this during the international break, when a widely shared chart conveniently informed us that Sesko had been deemed – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. And of course, the media are by no means the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: all parties with skin in the game is now essentially aligned along the identical rules, an ecosystem deliberately geared for controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to ourselves? Are we aware, on any level, what this infinite sluice of aggravation is doing to our brains? Separate from the essential weirdness of being a player in the center of this, knowing on some surreal chain-reaction level that each aspect about them is now essentially content, product, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

And yes, partly this is because United are United, the corpse that continues to feed the narrative, a big club that must always be producing the strong emotions. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, a swing of opinion most clearly and harshly observed at this season, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been coveting players, praising them, drooling over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, a lot of those same players are now being disdained as failures. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that he faces Liverpool on the weekend: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the league and yet in their own situation of feverish crisis, like filing a a report on a person who popped to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Their star past his prime. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. The coach bald.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football itself, to influence the way we view it, an entire sport repivoted around talking points and immediate responses, an activity that occurs in the background while we scroll through our devices, incapable to detach from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. Perhaps this player bearing the brunt at present. But in a way, everyone is losing something in this process.