It has been a tough for weeks for the Palace
While there have been two good FA Cup wins, we lost five games in a row before the encouraging draw at Swansea on Saturday.
This can be a tense time of year for football fans.
The season is building up to a crescendo and every team has something to stop for, even if it is just to avoid mid-table mediocrity.
The transfer window adds an unnatural excitement, as supporters apply the same emotions they experience in a game to each rumour of a sale or a signing.
That Palace ‘only’ signed Emmanuel Adebayor while the likes of Norwich and Newcastle splashed the cash made January seem like watching a dull nil-nil draw.
The combination of the poor results and lack of transfer activity seems have made many Palace fans unhappy.
I think this unhappiness is a reflection of how far the club has come.
Two years ago, we were in the position that Norwich and Newcastle find themselves in. We had to strengthen the squad and we had to sign the right players. Scott Dann and Joe Ledley were fantastic signings, the perfect players to help get us out of the relegation battle.
This season Norwich and Newcastle need the Ledleys and the Danns, or Shelveys, Townsends and Naismiths.
Palace now have 32 points with 13 games to go. 37 or 38 points will be enough for safety. Bolasie will be back soon, Wickham will score soon and Cabaye will get back to his best.
We may not finish 10th or 11th, but we will be fine, and optimism will be restored in the summer, when we will hopefully make more strategic signings as we did with Cabaye last summer.
I think we have so much to be positive about.
We have the US investors on board who will hopefully fund the long overdue upgrade of Selhurst Park.
We had a wonderful brief cameo from Premier League debutant Hiram Boateng, one of our own, the first for four years, and who was so close to that dream goal.
The bond between the club and the fans will be restored.
And that is something we should be very proud of. It is a real strength of the club, especially since the days of the 2010 administration.
We don’t have the bond between the fans and the club going back decades.
There is one club in particular I associate with having the tightest of bonds with the fans. A bond built over decades of close community links, raising local heroes, adopting and worshipping heroes from far and wide, winning everything for a while, and suffering the most appalling and unbelievable tragedy.
Tis Liverpool I speak of, of course.
And on Saturday at the same time as Palace fans were enjoying that debut from Boateng, Liverpool fans staged a walkout in the 77th minute in protest at season ticket prices next season.
The fact that Sunderland managed to pull two goals back and grab a point might have detracted from the message the Liverpool fans were trying to get out.
It is a message that is worthy of serious discussion. The prices being charged for some of the corporate boxes at Anfield next season are absurd. The £77 seat price is pretty steep too, especially when you can’t beat Sunderland.
I was listening to the radio on Saturday afternoon and I have to admit that I smiled when I heard Defoe had equalised. Later on, I was impressed to see the pictures of the fans leaving their seats – it was conspicuous on the telly and must have been conspicuous to the suits in the Directors’ Box.
We have seen fan protests before – remember the yellow and green scarves at Old Trafford, and several anti-Ashley walk-outs at Newcastle.
In those cases, the fans didn’t achieve their ends and the effort seemed to peter out. Those protests were perhaps too specific to their clubs. Liverpool’s might get more traction, as the issue of ticket pricing is not just specific to them.
The Liverpool protest might have more chance – there are already rumours that the Liverpool board might be having a re-think. If they do back down, it would just add another unexpected turnaround in what has been an amazing season.
Leicester’s win over Manchester City was a fantastic effort from a really well-organised team. It was clearly the game of the weekend, unlike Chelsea versus Manchester United, which had the impact of a couple of guys too drunk to hit each other at closing time.
This could be the most remarkable season for the smaller clubs and for the committed fans. We shouldn’t let our recent run distract us from that.
