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Picture this: a smiling the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Next, juxtapose that with a dejected Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, looking as if he's missed a sitter. Don't worry locating an actual photo of him missing; background information is the enemy. Now, include statistics in a large, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Post the image 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 Europe? Of course not. Nor would you note that several of the Dane's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and generates far more scoring opportunities. If you manage online for a large outlet, pure interaction is what pays the bills, United are the biggest draw, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

Thus the cycle of content spins. The next job is to sift through a lengthy interview with the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "weird". Just before, where Schmeichel prefaces his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. Nobody wants that. Just make sure "weird" and "the player" appear together in the title. The audience will be outraged.

This Time of Promise and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has long been one of my favourite times to observe football. Leaves fall, winds shift, the teams and tactics are newly formed, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the season ahead are staking their claims. The transfer window is closed. No one is mentioning the quadruple yet. All teams are in contention. Right now, all is possibility.

However, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my most disliked times to read about football. For while no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is reborn. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? We need a decision now.

Sesko as The Prime Example

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 definitive judgment, to let technical development and tactical sophistication to develop. And the imperative to produce instant definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, out-of-context criticisms and pointless contrasts, a puzzle that can never truly be solved.

It is not my aim to offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's time at United so far. The guy has started four times in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and taken a grand total of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? And will I attempt to duplicate 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 Sesko needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this year (Neville), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching him at his former club: a big, screeching racing car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: afforded the license to attack but also the leeway to miss. And in part this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in about the time it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most ruthless gap between the time and air he needs, and the time and air he is going to get.

There was an example of this over the national team pause, when a widely shared chart conveniently informed us that the player had been deemed – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a survey of football representatives. Naturally, the media are by no means alone in this. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: everybody with a vested interest is now basically operating along the identical rules, an environment deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite sluice of irritation is doing to our brains? Separate from the essential weirdness of playing in the middle of this, knowing on some surreal chain-reaction level that each aspect about players is now essentially material, product, public property to be repackaged and traded.

And yes, in part this is because United are United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a major institution that must constantly be producing the strong emotions. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of opinion most clearly and harshly glimpsed at this season, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been desiring footballers, praising them, salivating over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, many of those same players are now being disdained as failures. Is it time to worry about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres 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 Premier League and yet in their own state of perceived turmoil, like filing a a report on someone who popped to the shops half an hour ago. Too open. Their star past his prime. Alexander Isak waste of money. The coach bald.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has started to replace football itself, to inflect the way we watch it, an entire sport repivoted around discussion topics and reaction, something that occurs in the backdrop while we scroll through our devices, unable to disconnect from the constant flow of opinions and further hot takes. It may be this player taking the hit right now. But in a way, everyone is losing a part of the experience here.