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Imagine this: a smiling the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Next, juxtapose that with a dejected the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he's missed a sitter. Do not worry locating an actual photo of that miss; context is the enemy. Now, include statistics in a large, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Post it everywhere.

Will you point out that Højlund's tally includes strikes in the premier European competition while his counterpart does not compete in Europe? Certainly not. And would you highlight that four of the Dane's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that his national team is far superior to Slovenia and creates far more chances. If you run social media for a major brand, pure interaction is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

So the cycle 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". Just before, where he qualifies his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. Nobody needs that. Simply ensure "strange" and "Sesko" appear together in the title. People will be furious.

The Season of Promise and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has long been one of my favourite periods to observe football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, squads and strategies are still fresh, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the coming months are staking their claims. The summer market is shut. Nobody is talking about the quadruple yet. All teams are still in the game. Right now, anything is possible.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, this period has also been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. For while nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league at this moment? We need a decision now.

Sesko as The Prime Example

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to delay definitive judgment, to let layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to mature. And the imperative to produce instant verdicts, a constant stream of opinions and jokes, context-free criticisms and meaningless contrasts, a puzzle that can not truly be solved.

It is not my aim to provide a substantive analysis of Sesko's time at United to date. The guy has started on four occasions in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and had a grand total 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 famous analysts duel passionately on a popular show over whether he needs 10 goals to be a success this year (Neville), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching Sesko at Leipzig: a powerful, fast sports car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: given the freedom to attack but also the freedom to miss. And in part this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in about the time it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most ruthless gulf between the time and air he requires, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

There was a case of this during the international break, when a viral infographic handily informed us that Sesko had been judged – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the press are not alone in this. Team social media, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: all parties with skin in the game is now essentially aligned along the identical rules, an ecosystem deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this endless stream of aggravation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of playing in the middle of it all, aware on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that each aspect about players is now basically material, commodity, public property to be repackaged and traded.

Indeed, in part this is because United are United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a big club that must always be producing the strong emotions. However, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of judgment most visibly and cruelly observed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been coveting footballers, praising them, drooling over them. Now, only a handful of games later, many of those same players are already being dismissed as failures. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker necessary? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that he faces 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 store half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah finished. The striker an expensive flop. The coach bald.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to influence the way we view it, an whole competition repivoted around talking points and immediate responses, something that occurs in the background while we scroll through our devices, unable to detach from the constant flow of opinions and more takes. It may be this player bearing the brunt at present. However, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.