The club announced the new four-year contract at midday. The media team had prepared for this the way a general prepares for an invasion: every asset deployed, every channel primed, every second choreographed for maximum impact.
The announcement video was a work of art. It opened with archive footage: grainy, shaky phone recordings of me on the touchline during those five impossible matches at the end of last season, still wearing the academy tracksuit, arms waving, voice hoarse, a twenty-seven-year-old nobody fighting against the tide.
Then it cut to the present. Slow motion. Me walking through the corridor at Beckenham, the camera tracking alongside, the walls lined with the framed shirts of Palace legends. I pushed open the boardroom door, sat down at the table, picked up the pen, and signed.
