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Picture the following: a happy the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Now, juxtapose that with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Do not worry finding an actual photo of that miss; background information is your adversary. Now, include some goal stats in a large, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Share it across all platforms.

Would you mention that Højlund's tally includes strikes in the premier European competition while his counterpart does not compete in continental tournaments? Certainly not. Nor will you highlight that four of Højlund's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and creates many more scoring opportunities. If you manage social media for a large outlet, pure engagement is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

Thus the wheel of content spins. The next job is to scan a lengthy interview featuring the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "strange". Just before, where Schmeichel prefaces his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. Nobody wants that. Simply ensure "strange" and "the player" are paired in the title. The audience will be outraged.

The Season of Potential and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has long been one of my favourite periods to observe football. Leaves fall, winds shift, squads and strategies are still fresh, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the season ahead are planting their flags. The summer market is closed. Nobody is mentioning the quadruple yet. Everyone are in contention. Right now, anything is possible.

Yet, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my most disliked times to read about football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is resurgent. The German talent has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league right now? We need an answer immediately.

The Player as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player caught between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The need to withhold final conclusions, allowing layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to mature. And the demand to produce instant definitive judgment, a constant stream of opinions and memes, context-free criticisms and meaningless comparisons, a puzzle that can not truly be circled.

It is not my aim to provide a in-depth analysis of Sesko's time at Manchester United so far. The guy has been in the lineup on four occasions in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and taken a grand total of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? Nor do I propose to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits argue passionately on a popular show over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this year (one pundit), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I loved watching him at his former club: a powerful, fast sports car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: afforded the license to rampage but also the freedom to fail. And in part this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most pitiless gulf between the time and air he requires, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

There was an example of this during the national team pause, when a widely shared infographic handily informed us that the player had been judged – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the press are not the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: all parties with a vested interest is now basically operating along the same principles, an environment explicitly geared for controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to ourselves? Do we realize, on some level, what this infinite sluice of irritation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of playing in the middle of it all, knowing on some surreal chain-reaction level that every single thing about them is now basically content, product, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

And yes, partly this is because United are United, the entity that keeps nourishing the narrative, a major institution that must always be generating the strong emotions. However, partly this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of opinion most clearly and cruelly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been desiring footballers, eulogising them, salivating over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, a lot of those same players are already being dismissed as failures. Is it time to be concerned about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker wise? What was the point of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that he faces Liverpool on Sunday: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and somehow in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like filing a missing person’s report on someone who went to the store 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Their star finished. The striker waste of money. The coach losing his hair.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football itself, to influence the way we watch it, an whole competition reoriented around discussion topics and reaction, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we scroll through our phones, incapable to disconnect from the saline drip of takes and more takes. Perhaps this player bearing the brunt right now. However, we're all sacrificing something here.