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Picture this: a happy Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, juxtapose that with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he just missed an open goal. Don't worry locating a real picture of him missing; context is your adversary. Now, add statistics in a big, silly font. Don't forget some emoticons. Post the image everywhere.

Will you mention that Højlund's tally includes scores in the Champions League while Sesko does not compete in Europe? Certainly not. And will you note that four of Højlund's goals came against weaker national sides, or that his national team is much stronger to Slovenia and generates far more chances. You run online for a major brand, pure engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

Thus the wheel of content spins. Your next task is to scan a 44-minute interview featuring Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where Schmeichel qualifies his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. No one needs that. Just ensure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired in the headline. The audience will be furious.

This Time of Potential and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my preferred periods to watch football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are still fresh, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the season ahead are planting their flags. The transfer window is shut. Nobody is talking about the quadruple yet. All teams are still in the game. Right now, all is possibility.

However, for similar reasons, this period has also been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. For while nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is resurgent. The German talent has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league right now? We need a decision now.

Sesko as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player caught between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to withhold definitive judgment, to let layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to mature. And the demand to generate instant verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and memes, out-of-context criticisms and pointless comparisons, a puzzle that can never truly be circled.

It is not my aim to provide a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's time at United so far. He has started on four occasions in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and taken a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we evaluating? Nor will I attempt to replicate the pundits' notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits argue thrillingly on a podcast over whether he needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this year (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching him at Leipzig: a powerful, screeching sports car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: afforded the license to attack but also the freedom to miss. Partly this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most pitiless gap between the time and air he needs, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

There was an example of this over the international break, when a viral infographic conveniently informed us that the player had been deemed – decisively – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a survey of 20 agents. Naturally, the media are not the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: all parties with a vested interest is now basically operating along the same principles, an environment deliberately geared for controversy.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to us? Do we realize, on any level, what this endless sluice of aggravation is doing to our minds? Separate from the inherent strangeness of playing in the middle of this, knowing on some surreal chain-reaction level that each aspect about players is now essentially material, commodity, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

Indeed, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that continues to feed the narrative, a big club that must always be generating the strong emotions. But also, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of opinion most clearly and harshly glimpsed at this season, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. 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 already being dismissed as broken goods. Is it time to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the point of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that Sesko meets their rivals on Sunday: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and yet in their own state of feverish crisis, like filing a missing person’s report on someone who went to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Their star past his prime. Alexander Isak waste of money. The coach losing his hair.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football itself, to influence the way we view it, an whole competition reoriented around talking points and reaction, an activity that happens in the backdrop while we scroll through our phones, incapable to detach from the constant flow of opinions and more takes. It may be this player bearing the brunt right now. However, everyone is losing a part of the experience in this process.