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Picture this: a happy Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, juxtapose it with a dejected Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he just missed an open goal. Don't bother locating a real picture of that miss; background information is your adversary. Then, add statistics in a big, silly font. Don't forget the emojis. Share it everywhere.

Will you mention that Højlund's goal count includes scores in the premier European competition while his counterpart isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. Nor would you highlight that four of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that his national team is far superior to Slovenia and creates far more chances. You manage social media for a large outlet, raw interaction is your livelihood, United are the biggest draw, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

So the cycle of content turns. The next job is to scan a lengthy podcast featuring the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he qualifies his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. No one needs that. Just make sure "strange" and "the player" are paired in the headline. People will be furious.

This Time of Potential and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my preferred times to watch football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, the teams and tactics are still fresh, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the season ahead are planting their flags. The transfer window is closed. No one is mentioning the quadruple yet. All teams are in contention. At this precise point, anything is possible.

However, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is reborn. The German talent has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league right now? We need a decision immediately.

The Player as Patient Zero

In many ways, Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player caught between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The need to withhold definitive judgment, allowing layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to generate permanent definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of opinions and memes, out-of-context condemnations and pointless contrasts, a puzzle that can not truly be circled.

I do not propose to offer a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's time at United to date. He has been in the lineup four times in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and had a mere of 116 touches. What precisely are we analysing? Nor do I propose to replicate the pundits' notable debate "The Sesko Debate", 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 season (one pundit), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I loved watching Sesko at his former club: a powerful, screeching sports car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: given the freedom to rampage but also the freedom to miss. And in part this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in roughly the duration it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most ruthless gap between the time and air he requires, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

We saw a case of this over the international break, when a widely shared infographic conveniently stated that Sesko had been judged – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of football representatives. And of course, the media are not the only ones in such behavior. Club channels, influencers, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: everybody with skin in the game is now essentially operating along the same principles, an environment explicitly geared for provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to ourselves? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite sluice of irritation is doing to our brains? Separate from the inherent strangeness of playing in the middle of it all, knowing on some surreal chain-reaction level that each aspect about players is now essentially material, commodity, open-source property to be packaged and exchanged.

Indeed, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a big club that must constantly be generating the strong emotions. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of judgment most visibly and harshly observed at this season, about a month after the window has closed. All summer long we have been desiring players, eulogising them, drooling over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are already being disdained as broken goods. Should we start to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that Sesko meets Liverpool on the weekend: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at home in the league and somehow in their own state of perceived turmoil, like submitting a missing person’s report on a person who went to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Their star finished. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. Arne Slot bald.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to inflect the way we view it, an whole competition reoriented around talking points and immediate responses, something that happens in the background while we browse through our phones, unable to detach from the constant flow of opinions and further hot takes. Perhaps this player taking the hit at present. But in a way, we're all losing something here.