The initial view was not to write just another piece about the recent feeling of total despair.
That has proved very tough indeed, tougher perhaps that the week after was to deal with and face up to.
Life clearly goes on, or so they say, and even though I would have kicked the cat on Sunday if there was one in the house, it is far better to be in reflective mood.
I am not going to tell you that we would have all taken a fifteenth place finish in the Premier League and an appearance in the FA Cup Final had we been offered it at the beginning of the season. It has been hard to feel anything other than disappointment on both fronts but I maintain that it has been an interesting season for us.
As a club, we have often struggled in the lower echelons of the top table early in a season and finished with just enough to have a chance of survival. Staying up has not always been possible but the success of 2013/14 and 2014/15 by finishing eleventh and tenth respectively suggested that this season was always going to be an odd one.
Finishing in the top half of the table was an incredible feat in only our second season back in the top flight and it was an improvement on the previous season where all we hoped for was survival just like any newly promoted side.
That led to Palace fans scratching their heads last summer wondering where our little club from South London could go from here. We would be fools to think that we would challenge the top six teams in the division but that is exactly what we did right up until the wheels started to fall off towards the end of 2015.
Before the first ball of the new Premier League season was kicked, fans expectations were raised more than a notch with the addition of Frenchman Yohan Cabaye, a midfield player that was a real marquee signing. Then came Connor Wickham from Sunderland for a sizable fee, a player that has been linked with Palace for what seemed like every transfer window for the last five years.
The summer also saw the club welcome Mansion Group as the new official sponsor after Neteller cut ties surprisingly early. It was a high profile addition as Mansion boasts a broad portfolio of popular online casinos of which Casino.com is its flagship. There are also slot gacor hari ini games offering exciting rewards, thrilling gameplay and betting strategies that sports fans can enjoy.
The already heightened expectation continued throughout the first half of the season as an exciting looking Palace side travelled to the likes of Chelsea and Liverpool and returned home with the win on both occasions. The side even found themselves in the top four more than once but the cracks were starting to show with a big defeat away to Manchester City in the League Cup and injuries beginning to have an impact on the first team.
Regardless, we found ourselves exceeding thirty points by the time the year was out which left fans wondering what we could go on and achieve come the end of the season. Alas, that is when the season of two halves really did kick in and that horrific run of games hung over us like gathering storm clouds.
We had rarely experienced this before in the top division. Starting so well and fading as the season went on. Rather than fading, it was more dropping like a stone but we need not have feared. A run of sorts got us enough points to keep the heads above water, all the time we were being drawn against Premier League sides in the FA Cup and finding a way of beating them.
Strange concept I know but it almost worked just perfectly. A proud and passionate performance in the stands was matched by the players on the pitch. Once again, it was not to be our time but the sheer unbridled joy and pandemonium in that one moment at Wembley when Jason Puncheon found a way past De Gea. The feeling of being just a matter of minutes from lifting the world famous FA Cup. Not a lot will come close to beating that feeling.
Now the dust has settled on what was quite a day being involved in the showpiece event of English football, looking back at the season, it really was not all bad. There were critics throughout, particularly those with knee jerk reactions on social media during games only to see the Eagles win come the final whistle on more than one occasion.
Plenty have questioned the terrible run of games and the position of Alan Pardew at the club but for me he has earned himself a summer at the club to work on a squad of players, most of which he inherited. A few tweaks here and there are much needed but whether Pardew does the right thing with new signings and potential sales, only time will tell.
One thing is for certain, Pardew will be only too well aware that he cannot afford another run like that we experienced since the turn of 2016. It is doubtful that he will be given the same amount of time to turn things around.
There is not a chance that I will end this article with a negative as there have been plenty of highs including ending up as FA Cup finalists. The aforementioned wins at Chelsea and Liverpool were real highlights, and while home wins were few and far between, those against Southampton and Newcastle United were excellent.
We wait with baited breath to find out what next season has in store for us. Like most, I am very much looking forward to it.
