[Selhurst Park. Saturday. 15:20 BST.]
Friday there had been half a million people on these streets.
Today a bloke walking a dog and a traffic cone nobody had come back for.
I went in through the players' entrance. Mick on the door said nothing about Friday, just nodded the way he had been nodding at me since the week we were 0–5 at home to Wolves in August of last year, which was the season we did not lose another league game.
Inside, the ground was doing the thing empty grounds do at half past three on the day after a parade. The floodlights warming. The mmmm off the rig. My own footsteps coming back off the empty Holmesdale.
Nobody had finished sweeping. There was red and blue paper still in the corner of the hoardings, and a Palace scarf hanging off a seat in row F where somebody had lost it on Friday and not noticed yet.
Down on the touchline it was all cable and crates.
