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Picture the following: a happy Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Now, juxtapose it with a dejected Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he's missed a sitter. Don't bother finding an actual photo of that miss; context is the enemy. Now, add statistics in a large, comical font. Don't forget some emoticons. Share it everywhere.

Will you mention that Højlund's tally features scores in the Champions League while his counterpart does not compete in Europe? Of course not. And would you highlight that several of the Dane's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Slovenia and generates far more chances. If you manage social media for a major brand, raw interaction is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the prime target, and context is your sworn enemy.

So the cycle of online material spins. The next job is to scan a 44-minute interview featuring the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he calls the acquisition 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. No one wants that. Just make sure "strange" and "Sesko" are paired in the headline. The audience will be outraged.

The Season of Promise and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has long been one of my favourite times to watch football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, squads and strategies are newly formed, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the season ahead are planting their flags. The transfer window is shut. Nobody 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, this period has long been one of my most disliked times to read about football. Because although no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league right now? Please a decision now.

The Player as The Prime Example

In many ways, Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to delay final conclusions, to let layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to generate permanent definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, out-of-context criticisms and pointless comparisons, a puzzle that can not truly be circled.

I do not propose to provide a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's time at Manchester United to date. The guy has been in the lineup on four occasions in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and had a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we analysing? Nor will I attempt to replicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel thrillingly on a popular show over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be a success this year (one pundit), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I enjoyed watching him at Leipzig: a powerful, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: given the freedom to rampage but also the leeway to miss. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most ruthless gulf between the time and air he needs, and the time and air he is going to get.

There was a case of this over the international break, when a widely shared chart conveniently informed us that the player had been deemed – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a survey of football representatives. And of course, the media are not alone in this. Team social media, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: everybody with a vested interest is now basically aligned along the identical rules, an ecosystem deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to ourselves? Are we aware, on any level, what this infinite stream of aggravation is doing to our minds? Separate from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the center of it all, aware on some surreal chain-reaction level that every single thing about them is now basically material, product, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

And yes, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a big club that must always be generating the strong emotions. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a swing of judgment most clearly and cruelly glimpsed at this season, about a month after the window has closed. 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 broken goods. Should we start to worry about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker wise? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that Sesko faces their rivals on Sunday: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and somehow in their own state of feverish crisis, like filing a missing person’s report on someone who went to the store half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Their star past his prime. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to influence the way we view it, an entire sport reoriented around talking points and immediate responses, something that occurs in the backdrop while we scroll through our phones, incapable to disconnect from the constant flow of opinions and more takes. Perhaps this player taking the hit at present. But in a way, everyone is sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.