'Jose's gone!' came the shout. And all hell broke loose

In this job, there are days when you are scratching around for news and trying to find something interesting in the world of sport and then there are days like Tuesday, when someone shouts ”Jose’s gone!” and it’s like a bomb going off, blowing up the space-time continuum.

We had a matter of minutes to think about the possibility of Jose Mourinho being sacked by Manchester United after receiving a text message suggesting his demise could be imminent. Then the official announcement dropped – and we sprang into action.

The immediate aftermath is a blur of pointing and shouting. We had published a basic story on the sacking within four minutes. But that is just the start of a long, winding journey to the end of the day. It is 12 or 14 hours that feels like a whirlwind few seconds.

Come nightfall on Tuesday we had amassed 31 different pieces on the situation, which extended way beyond Mourinho. The obvious ones were there: where would he go next? Who would the club go for? Where did it all go wrong?

But there is also the need – and a voracious appetite from readers – for definitive analysis. Within three hours of Manchester United’s official announcement we had incisive breakdowns of the key threads to the whole story from our biggest football writers.

As soon as it became clear that Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was to be Mourinho’s surprise interim replacement the focus then shifted to the Norwegian. How did he do at Molde, his previous club in Norway’s top tier? Is this the right appointment for United? Why was it not United coach Michael Carrick? What does it say about those making the decisions?

Journalism is about asking questions, and when coordinating the coverage of the biggest stories I find it helpful to ask the questions out loud that we think our readers want answered – then we find someone appropriately informed and talented to write us the answer.

This, I hope, resulted in a stream of content that covered one of the biggest sports stories of the year from almost every possible angle and at a very high level. We try to give events like this the coverage they deserve and our team clubbed together to produce tens of thousands of words of breaking news, sage analysis and relevant context that they should be proud of.

It wasn’t the quiet Tuesday we’d expected, but the adrenaline rush of covering breaking news events – and doing it well – can make for the most satisfying moments.

Yours,

Ed Malyon

Sports editor