I’VE always maintained that the best parties are those unplanned, impromptu celebrations which seem all the more enjoyable for their unexpected occurrence.

You know the ones: where a quiet pint after work suddenly becomes several, long-lost friends suddenly appear at your elbow, and all of a sudden you’re impersonating Lee Evans trying to get to the toilet.

By contrast, those ‘dos’ which have been eagerly-anticipated often disappoint, unable to live up to the hype generated by days or weeks of preparation and expectation.

And so it transpired that last week, football mimicked life.

A balmy Monday night by the Thames in a civilised part of London turned into an evening of raucous entertainment and excitement; a king’s much-heralded coronation on Sunday fell as flat as last night’s ale.

While the away end at Fulham was a heaving, jumping mass of celebration, the Kop on Sunday was strangely subdued, and the envisaged end-of-season party felt more like the morning-after in the office. Of course the mood was set on both occasions by the opening 15 minutes on the pitch: At Fulham we were 3-0 up and dancing our way through the opposition; against Spurs we were 1-0 down and still waiting for the booze to turn up.

Like most others, I had been really looking forward to Sunday, expecting us to sweep Spurs away on a tide of attacking football, confining their experience of European football to a single season and punishing those charlatans for usurping our Champions’ League spot.