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Picture this: a happy the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Now, juxtapose it with a dejected Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, looking as if he just missed a sitter. Do not bother finding an actual photo of that miss; context is your adversary. Now, include statistics in a large, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Post the image across all platforms.

Would you point out that Højlund's tally features strikes in the premier European competition while his counterpart isn't playing in Europe? Of course not. Nor will you note that four of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that his national team is far superior to Slovenia and generates far more scoring opportunities. You manage social media for a large outlet, raw interaction is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of online material turns. Your next task is to sift through a lengthy interview with the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "strange". Just before, where he prefaces his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. Nobody needs that. Simply make sure "strange" and "Sesko" appear together in the title. The audience will be outraged.

The Season of Potential and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has long been one of my favourite periods to observe football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are newly formed, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the coming months are planting their flags. The transfer window is closed. No one is talking about the quadruple yet. All teams are still in the game. Right now, all is possibility.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, this period has also been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. For while nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is reborn. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? Please an answer now.

Sesko as The Prime Example

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to delay final conclusions, allowing technical development and strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to produce permanent definitive judgment, a constant stream of opinions and jokes, context-free criticisms and pointless comparisons, a square that can not truly be circled.

I do not propose to offer a substantive evaluation of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. 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 touches. What precisely are we evaluating? And do I propose to duplicate the pundits' notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits argue passionately on a popular show over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this season (Neville), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I enjoyed watching him at Leipzig: a powerful, fast racing car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: given the freedom to attack but also the leeway to miss. And in part this is why United feels like the most unforgiving 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 largest and most pitiless gap between the time and air he needs, and the opportunity he is going to get.

There was a case of this over the international break, when a viral chart conveniently stated that the player had been judged – decisively – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a poll of 20 agents. And of course, the media are by no means the only ones in such behavior. Club channels, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of fake followers: all parties with a vested interest is now basically aligned along the identical rules, an environment deliberately geared for controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? Do we realize, on any level, what this infinite stream of aggravation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of playing in the middle of this, aware on some surreal chain-reaction level that every single thing about players is now essentially material, product, public property to be repackaged and exchanged.

Indeed, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that continues to feed the cycle, a major institution that must always be producing the big feelings. However, partly this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of opinion most clearly and cruelly glimpsed at this season, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been desiring players, eulogising them, drooling over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, a lot of those same players are already being disdained as broken goods. Is it time to worry about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that Sesko faces their rivals on Sunday: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at home in the league and somehow in their own state of perceived turmoil, like submitting a a report on a person who popped to the store 30 minutes ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah finished. Alexander Isak waste of money. Arne Slot bald.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has started to replace football itself, to inflect the way we watch it, an entire sport reoriented around discussion topics and immediate responses, something that happens in the background while we browse through our devices, unable to detach from the constant flow of opinions and further hot takes. Perhaps this player bearing the brunt at present. However, everyone is sacrificing something in this process.