Crystal Palace have become quite the philosophical poser, which we’re sure will be of huge comfort to their fans as they watch everything that had been built over the last 18 months come crashing down around their feet.
But the inevitable question posed by Palace’s story in recent years is still a belter, and not as easily answered as might initially appear.
And the question is this: Should Palace’s astonishing rise and fall over the last two years ends, as now seems alarmingly possible, with relegation, is that better or worse than the previous decade spent trudging along finishing 12th every year (or near enough) and getting 47 points (or near enough)?
Instinctively, you feel the drama of the last two years must be better. Look at those shots of fans at Wembley on FA Cup final day. That was the best day in Palace’s history, a day many couldn’t know they would ever live to see. Any price would be worth paying.
But the price has proved spectacularly high. We all know by now that the smaller teams aren’t allowed nice things – certainly not for long anyway.
Yet the sheer speed and scale of what has been taken away from Palace is still enough to make anyone’s head spin. It’s only eight months since Wembley, and Palace have lost or imminently will lose their best player, their best goalscorer, their captain, their manager, their Europa League place, their hopes, their dreams, their future.
Jean-Philippe Mateta might even leave for Nottingham Forest, of all clubs. Adam Wharton will be the next to look at possible exit ramps.
It’s a bit f*cking much, isn’t it? Especially when all you get in return is a used Brennan Johnson and a go at the Conference League.
We are very much now at the time of the season where it’s the teams falling like a stone into relegation trouble that you fear for most, much more than those who’ve been moulded by the darkness all season.
Especially when those teams – your Nottingham Forests, your Leeds Uniteds, and now even the West Hams of this world – are starting to show signs of life.
There are few such signs at Palace, who are now without a win of any kind in any competition against anyone since beating Shelbourne in the Conference League back in December 11.
The 11 games since then have included drawing at home to Finland’s KuPS, who needed that point to scrape into the top 24 of UEFA’s third-tier competitions, becoming the first top-flight team ever knocked out of the FA Cup by one from the sixth tier and, most embarrassing and damaging of all, losing to Dr Tottenham in what now turns out to have been a really quite important relegation six-pointer.
For it is Spurs, whose infamous generosity has been accepted by so many others in recent weeks, who join Palace as being the team spinning desperately out of control towards disaster. But even at their current levels of ridiculousness, there still feels like more Spurs can do to pull out of the tailspin. They just, for reasons we haven’t yet quite fathomed, don’t really want to do them.
Palace’s growing crisis feels even more existential. This is a club now gripped by paralysis, where even if it acts, then what? Spurs are fabulously wealthy but more importantly being severely punished for failure; if they ever decide to sort themselves out they can still be fine. Palace are being severely punished for success. That’s a far harder puzzle to solve.
It really wasn’t that long ago that we still thought even the loss of Oliver Glasner, which was always inevitable somewhere pretty soon down the line, need not be a catastrophe if handled right. It no longer feels like that’s the case.
Even if Palace get the next appointment spot on, that next manager can’t build on what Glasner achieved because everything Glasner has achieved is already being ripped down and trampled underfoot before he even officially departs.
And that departure also now seems certain to come before its appointed time in the summer, with Glasner now cutting an increasingly frustrated and dejected figure.
Dragging things out surely can’t be doing either him or Palace any good, but right now it just seems hard to imagine what will.
