I was in the office today when this story exploded. Which is what stories do in the era of Twitter. They turn into flaming meteors the size of New Jersey which slam into the news cycle, crushing everything else.

When the 144-character primary news source (that would be Twitter) gets hold of a story it almost instantly turns into a self-reinforcing mountain of hysteria built on half a fact, or maybe no facts at all.

It’s OK for fans to spread hearsay, but journalists shouldn’t do it, but we generally do. It’s like we’ve all lost our minds and the journalism rules of “sources” go out the window. And we begin to declare as fact something that hasn’t quite happened yet.

In this case, the imminent departure, apparently, of David Moyes, the man who replaced Alex Ferguson — who is the man who led United to 13 league titles and two Uefa Champions League victories in 26-plus seasons as coach.

This probably is a bigger story in the U.S. than it would have been five years ago. But it is an enormous story over here, in the UAE, where the English Premier League is closely followed.

Manchester United has been the most successful club in England for two decades. And fans in Asia are even bigger front-runners than most. So, United has have lots of fans.

And then all the English speakers in the country follow the Premier League, whether or not they want to, and while their preferences are far more particular (I know fans of all sorts of English clubs who have never won anything important), they all recognize the Moyes mess as news.

(Which, at this writing, is still not official; none of the hyperbole that infected the newspapers, too, had anyone Who Actually Knows Anything on the record.)

If seems likely Moyes will go this week or in the summer, and when it happens, it will be noted anew that he probably was never the right man for the job, even if Ferguson anointed him as his successor. (Something looked at, at length, by Richard Jolly in The National, who for the second time wrote that Moyes needs to go, and filed before Twitter went nuclear.)

Moyes previously had been at Everton, a team without the resources of the biggest four or five English clubs (Chelsea, Manchester City, Arsenal, Liverpool, United).

He became a specialist at finding players not quite flashy enough to attract the interest of the really big clubs, and molded them into a cohesive, defense-first club that tended to finish around eighth or ninth — earning him a fair level of respect from those who could see Everton’s talent was not the same as Chelsea’s.

(His players also liked him; Landon Donovan, the U.S. national who did two loan spells with Everton, is a big fan of Moyes.)

But then he moved over to Manchester United, where expectations are far higher and money more accessible, and a scoreless tie is rarely seen as a good thing (as often happened at Everton) … and he had trouble.

A case can be made that he took over a club prepared for a fall from winning the title last May, with too many old guys in too many key spots, and without any significant additions in the summer.

But he was in charge of hiring players, and pretty much the extent of that was overpaying to bring over Marouane Fellaini, who had been a midfielder for him at Everton and was awful with United.

Then came a mediocre campaign, in which United has lost 11 times in the league this year, unprecedented in their Premier League history, and went out of the FA Cup in the third round and stuck around in the Champions League till the quarterfinals, but were dismissed by Bayern Munich.

They are seventh, out of the Champions League next year for the first time since 1995, and the ramping up of the “Moyes is gone” chatter comes in the wake of a feckless 2-0 loss to Moyes’s former team, Everton — giving Everton a sweep of ManU this season.

A season which also included rare victories over United by teams like Stoke and West Bromwich Albion.

And even with a six-year (presumably guaranteed) contract in play, it looks as if the Glazers (Americans who also own the Tampa Bay Buccaneers) are ready to cut ties.

Not making the Champions League, which is worth tens of millions of dollars, probably helped concentrate the attention of Moyes’s bosses.

Even though, before the season, a lifelong United fan assured me Moyes would not be fired after one season, no matter what, because United is too classy for that sort of knee-jerk, panicked reaction. And now, eight months later, even that fan wants Moyes gone — “no matter what” apparently not including seventh place and no Champions League.

So, it’s all we talked about. United have been mum. English clubs are like that. They don’t speak before they’re ready.

But something should be coming down soon. And that will be big news, too.

Oh, and we’re already discussing replacements. Jurgen Klopp, anyone?