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Picture this: a happy Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Now, juxtapose it with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, appearing like he just missed an open goal. Do not bother locating an actual photo of him missing; context is the enemy. Now, include statistics in a large, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Share it everywhere.

Will you point out that Højlund's goal count includes scores in the premier European competition while his counterpart isn't playing in Europe? Certainly not. And will you note that several of Højlund's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and generates many more chances. You manage online for a large outlet, raw engagement is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

So the wheel of online material turns. Your next task is to scan a lengthy podcast featuring Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where he prefaces his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. No one wants that. Just make sure "weird" and "the player" are paired in the headline. The audience will be furious.

The Season of Potential and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has long been one of my favourite times to observe football. Leaves fall, winds shift, squads and strategies are newly formed, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the coming months are staking their claims. The transfer window is closed. No one is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are still in the game. At this precise point, all is possibility.

However, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. For while no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league at this moment? We need an answer now.

The Player as The Prime Example

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to withhold definitive judgment, to let technical development and strategic understanding to develop. And the imperative to generate instant verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, out-of-context condemnations and meaningless contrasts, a puzzle that can not truly be circled.

It is not my aim to provide a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's time at Manchester United to date. He has been in the lineup on four occasions in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and taken a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we analysing? Nor will I attempt to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel passionately on a podcast over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this season (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I loved watching him at Leipzig: a powerful, fast racing car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: given the freedom to rampage but also the leeway to fail. 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 summarily issued in about the time it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most pitiless gap between the patience and space he needs, and the time and air he is going to get.

We saw a case of this over the international break, when a widely shared chart conveniently informed us that the player had been deemed – decisively – the worst signing of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the media are not alone in this. Club channels, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: everybody with a vested interest is now essentially aligned along the same principles, an environment deliberately geared for provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to ourselves? Are we aware, on any level, what this endless sluice of aggravation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of playing in the middle of it all, knowing on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about players is now basically material, commodity, public property to be repackaged and traded.

And yes, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that keeps nourishing the cycle, a major institution that must constantly be generating the strong emotions. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of opinion most visibly and harshly observed at this time of year, 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 now being dismissed as broken goods. Is it time to worry about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need their striker wise? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that he faces Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the league and somehow in their own situation of feverish crisis, like submitting a missing person’s report on a person who popped to the store half an hour ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah finished. Alexander Isak waste of money. The coach losing his hair.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has started to replace football the actual game, to inflect the way we view it, an whole competition repivoted around discussion topics and reaction, something that happens in the backdrop while we scroll through our devices, incapable to disconnect from the constant flow of takes and further hot takes. Perhaps this player taking the hit right now. However, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.