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Imagine the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, place it with a dejected Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, looking as if he just missed a sitter. Do not worry locating a real picture of that miss; background information is the enemy. Then, include some goal stats in a large, comical font. Don't forget some emoticons. Post it everywhere.

Would you point out that Højlund's tally includes scores in the premier European competition while his counterpart isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. Nor will you note that several of Højlund's goals came against weaker national sides, or that his national team is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and generates far more chances. If you manage online for a major brand, raw engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the cycle of content turns. The next job is to scan a lengthy interview with the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he prefaces his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. No one wants that. Just ensure "weird" and "Sesko" appear together in the headline. People will be furious.

The Season of Promise and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my preferred periods to observe football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, squads and strategies 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 shut. No one is mentioning the quadruple yet. Everyone are in contention. At this precise point, all is possibility.

However, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league right now? We need a decision immediately.

Sesko as Patient Zero

In many ways, Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to delay definitive judgment, to let layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to develop. And the demand to produce instant definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, out-of-context criticisms and meaningless contrasts, a puzzle that can never truly be solved.

It is not my aim to offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's stint at United so far. He 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 will I attempt to duplicate the pundits' notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits duel passionately on a podcast over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be a success this season (Neville), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching Sesko at his former club: a big, fast sports car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: given the license to rampage but also the freedom to miss. And in part this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most pitiless gap between the time and air he requires, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

We saw a case of this over the national team pause, when a viral infographic conveniently stated that the player had been judged – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the media are not alone in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of fake followers: everybody with skin in the game is now essentially aligned along the same principles, an ecosystem explicitly geared for controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to us? Are we aware, on any level, what this infinite sluice of irritation is doing to our brains? Separate from the essential weirdness of being a player in the center of this, aware on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that every single thing about them is now basically content, product, public property to be repackaged and traded.

Indeed, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the cycle, a major institution that must always be producing the big feelings. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of judgment most clearly and cruelly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been coveting players, praising them, salivating over them. Now, only a handful of games later, a lot of those same players are already being disdained as failures. Is it time to worry about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that Sesko meets Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at home in the league and somehow in their own state of perceived turmoil, like submitting a a report on a person who went to the shops 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Their star past his prime. Alexander Isak waste of money. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to influence the way we view it, an entire sport repivoted around talking points and immediate responses, something that occurs in the background while we scroll through our devices, incapable to detach from the saline drip of takes and more takes. It may be Sesko bearing the brunt at present. But in a way, everyone is sacrificing something in this process.