Saturday, January 13th. Selhurst Park. Three o'clock. Chelsea.
The last time we played Chelsea, in October, we lost. I have not forgotten the feeling. The taste of ash. The first defeat of the season, the match that ended the unbeaten run and introduced the squad to the reality that the Premier League would not be kind simply because we had been brave.
Conte's side had been clinical, their counter-attacking brutal, Hazard's movement impossible to contain, and the result, two-one at Stamford Bridge, had left a mark that four months of winning had not fully erased.
I had not mentioned revenge to the squad. I did not need to. The players who had been at Stamford Bridge remembered.
The players who had watched from the bench remembered. And the twenty-five thousand people filing into Selhurst Park on a Saturday afternoon in January remembered, because Crystal Palace supporters remembered everything, especially the defeats, especially the ones that hurt.
