Crystal Palace and the great sense of injustice

The supposed ferocity of El CASico, a mutual mistrust and distaste of two clubs and fanbases that only recently enjoyed an amicable relationship, never quite materialised. Nottingham Forest’s team bus was ringed by police ahead of the clash with Crystal Palace and there were chants about the club’s owner Evangelos Marinakis from both sets of supporters. There were extra police deployed from Nottingham and London. But largely it all felt entirely unnecessary.

The one exception, a banner raised in Selhurst Park’s Holmesdale End that depicted Marinakis holding a gun to the head of Morgan Gibbs-White, has provoked a Football Association investigation and was probably ill-advised. But when a cartoon on white, billowing canvas is the height of the escalation, we can conclude that this was mor