On a lovely, soft, spring-like south London afternoon Crystal Palace produced a performance of thrust and refined attacking interplay to surge into an FA Cup semi-final at Wembley, and set up an intriguingly upbeat denouement to their season.
It helped that Palace were pitched against an Everton team that seemed to have no clear idea how they wanted to play, and none of the rage and resilience required to respond once they fell behind. Palace scored twice in each half. By the end the 4-0 defeat looked a little generous.
