The manager and coach have had their say, so have the players, now it's the turn of columnist Giles Smith to report how the weekend looked from the Matthew Harding Stand.

We all knew it had to end sometime. A run like that simply can't go on forever - even though, as the weeks and the matches racked up, it sometimes seemed as though it might.

Even so, it was hard to account properly for the strength of the feelings one had on Sunday when one realised that it really was, finally, all over. I know people whose sadness and sense of loss at that moment brought them to the brink of tears - almost like a bereavement, if that doesn't seem too strong a term in the context of what is, after all, only football.

Enough, though, about Spurs finally managing a win in 2008/9. I'm sure each of us have dealt with our disappointment about their 2-0 victory over Bolton and the events that ominously prefigured it (the sacking of Juande Ramos, the appointment of Harry Redknapp) in the ways most appropriate to us, and that we are all moving onwards now, with other things on our minds.

We, too, of course, lost something on Sunday - that unbeaten home league record, valid for an incredible four years and eight months. It was a staggering achievement that all of us who saw it pieced together, game by game, were privileged to witness, and I hope some of the warm applause at the final whistle was about that, rather than simply about the traditional Benny Hill-style caper involving a freelance pitch-invader and the stewards who brought him down.

We didn't just break the existing record (63 games, created by Liverpool between 1978 and 1981, back when they were formidable). We crushed it into tiny pieces, adding 23 games to it - expanding it by more than a third as much again. Only two members of our squad were around the last time we lost at home (John Terry, Frank Lampard). For the rest, and for a whole generation of young children who have started attending games since then, losing at Stamford Bridge was just something that doesn't happen.

Amazing times - but doomed, of course, like Spurs' bad luck, not to last for ever. On my way out after Sunday's match, I heard someone saying, 'It had to be them didn't it?' - meaning Liverpool, and sounding especially depressed about that particular aspect of it all.

And I suspect that his was by no means a minority view. If you had taken a poll around Stamford Bridge at any time in recent months, asking the single question, 'Whom, when the day comes, as it most surely will, would you least like to be the team that ends the unbeaten home league run?' Liverpool would probably have come, if not actually top (I reckon Spurs would have beaten them to that honour, and Leeds, too), then certainly in one of the non-automatic Champions League places. (The typical Liverpool outcome, in other words.)

I see this slightly differently, though. In a way, losing 1-0 to Liverpool was the outcome I would probably have chosen. Better, I would say, to lose by a streaky goal to what is historically, taking into account all competitions, the world's most streaky side, rather than to a team who didn't set up to stifle, get lucky with a massive deflection in the 11th minute and create very little else for the rest of the match, beyond a couple of scruffy breaks when we were over-committed to attack.

It would have been far worse, I'm saying, to have lost at home, after all this time, to a side that ran all over us, won solidly and unarguably by right, and left us feeling, all in all, pretty small. This way, we got to lose the home record and still walk tall afterwards.

In any case, there's a perfectly acceptable line of thought which suggests the home record was starting to get a little burdensome - that the perceived preciousness of it was beginning to lend an unhelpful edge to the last 10 minutes of tight matches, and that the players were starting to freeze up slightly in the face of it.

This might explain why, on Sunday, the response of the team to being a goal behind in the closing stages was to hit long balls, despite the manager urging the players to calm down and play their way out of trouble. It's perfectly possible that that panic would not have taken hold had the team been free of the thought that they were defending, not just the match, but the record.

They were adversely affected by the idea that there was more at stake than just three points, which, of course, in actual fact, there wasn't.

In which case, we could live to be very grateful to Liverpool for ending the run when they did. It could free us up very usefully from here on in, starting at home to Sunderland on Saturday.

Meanwhile there is tonight's surprisingly critical match at Hull. Every season, there is a club that starts the season on the 'b' of 'bang' and enjoys a fantastic but startling run that pushes them up into contention in a way that probably can't realistically be sustained, but which is hugely diverting and good for the entertainment value of the Premier League none the less. And this season, obviously, that club is Liverpool.

But let's not overlook the amazing start that Hull have had, too, winning tough games in high style, with authentically intended, rather than miserably deflected goals.

None of this was particularly predictable just over a year ago (though it seems so much longer, somehow) when, in the wake of José Mourinho's abrupt departure, we went to Hull in the Carling Cup and celebrated the beginning of the Avram Grant era with a 4-0 win.

The train home, as I recall, appeared to go via Finland, eventually reaching London some time the following month. Maybe that's why it now seems so much more than a year ago.

Anyway, the fact is that, on present form, Hull away is a stiffer test of our credentials than any that was offered to us on Sunday lunchtime. A big performance here, and Sunday's minor blip can be consigned properly to history, along with that fantastic - and probably never to be matched - unbroken run, for which thank you, Chelsea.