Allow me to paint you a picture.

It’s not a very festive scene – there’s no snow – but heading into Saturday’s early kick off, away against the resurgent Premier League champions, expectations weren’t very high.

In the first place, visits to Manchester are never very profitable for London clubs, let alone Crystal Palace.

Coming on the back of two draws and a defeat at home to Aston Villa, the Eagles were hardly on a rich vein of form.

On the other hand, City had won the previous seven games in all competitions – including wins against Roma, Everton and the incredible 3-2 turnaround against Bayern Munich.

Hot on the heels of Chelsea, City knew that only three points would do; whereas, under Neil Warnock, the Eagles constantly give off the air that even a valiant defeat wouldn’t be such a bad result.

Despite all of this, for the first 45 minutes of Saturday’s game Palace seemed to be rebelling against the context.

It’s always the hope that kills you, and while there wasn’t much hope leading up to kick-off, after a very well battled and bold first half Palace began to feel that familiar glimmer of hope.

Crystal Palace: Warnock blasts "disgraceful" offside call at Manchester City

Yannick Bolasie was an outstanding performer again, showing his usual cocktail of strength, trickery and invention, while even Fraizer Campbell looked up for the fight – coming close with an audacious overhead kick.

Nevertheless, the hope didn’t last too long. Just after half time City’s firm and pragmatic defending and persistent, patient attacking paid off.

The ball needed a gigantic deflection to beat Julian Speroni but there had been warning signs in the first half – notably Pablo Zabaleta’s dink which painstakingly crawled past his fellow countryman’s right hand post.

Within 12 minutes of the first goal, City and Silva struck again and that half time optimism looked well and truly dashed.

In this column I’m not one to usually bemoan decisions from officials. The anti-ref chants at Selhurst are extremely annoying, self-defeating, detrimental and unnecessary.

But I have to mention James McArthur’s perfectly good goal ruled out for offside.

It was an absolute travesty.

I’m not saying it was the reason Palace lost the tie, but taking the match to 2-1 shortly after the hour mark would have really upset the dynamic of the fixture and put a lot of pressure on the home side as well as giving Warnock’s team the impetus.

Instead, City kept a two-goal cushion and trotted to an easy win.

We didn’t help ourselves though. Momentary lapses in defensive concentration and over-stretching to chase the game were primarily to blame.

Plus, probably for the fifth time this season, Warnock’s substitutions left me open mouthed.

I had to check that this really happened but, yes, that really was Jerome William Thomas introduced in the 84th minute.

Meaning Palace ended the game with Bolasie, Thomas and Wilfried Zaha on the pitch. Three wingers.

And Dwight Gayle sat on the side-line.