BREAKING (and I use that word loosely): Crystal Palace have beaten Fiorentina 3-0 at Selhurst Park in the Conference League quarter-final first leg, and Oliver Glasner has gone and done it. He's said the words. The cursed words. He told the assembled media he could feel "something special" at Selhurst Park on Thursday night.

Oliver. Oliver, mate. What have you done?

Sources close to sources tell me that the phrase "something special" has a 100% track record of preceding absolute catastrophe in football. I haven't technically verified this. But I feel it in my bones, and my bones have never let me down. Well, they let me down once, but that was a trampoline incident and I don't want to talk about it.

Let me walk you through the history. When a manager describes a European night as "special," what they're actually doing is performing an ancient ritual that summons the Football Gods of Chaos. It's like saying "Bloody Mary" three times in a mirror, except instead of a ghost you get a 4-0 second leg collapse and Gary Lineker making that face on television.

Remember when Newcastle went to the San Siro in the Champions League group stage and everyone said it was a "special night for the club"? Sources close to sources tell me they then spent the next eighteen months trying to work out what happened to their squad. Remember when Tottenham reached a Champions League final and the entire world agreed it was "something special"? They lost to Liverpool inside two minutes of the second half after a penalty in the first.

The pattern is clear. The word "special" in football is not a celebration. It is a warning siren.

Now look, I want to be fair to Palace here. A 3-0 first leg lead is genuinely brilliant. Selhurst Park under the lights is one of those grounds that makes football worth loving. The noise, the atmosphere, the fact that it's physically impossible to get a decent cup of tea within a half mile radius of the place. It's everything the game should be. And Glasner has done remarkable things with this squad. Three goals against Fiorentina is no joke. Fiorentina are a proper side with proper players and a manager who probably had proper plans until Selhurst Park tore them up and used them as confetti.

But that's exactly my point. The better the first leg, the more suspicious I become. A 1-0 lead? That's manageable. That's sensible. That's a lead that knows its place. A 3-0 lead? That's a lead that's already booking flights to the semi-final hotel and picking out what suit to wear. That's a lead that thinks it's invincible. And we all know what football does to things that think they're invincible.

BREAKING (and I use that word even more loosely than usual): Sources close to sources tell me that Crystal Palace fans are currently experiencing something called "cautious optimism," which is the most dangerous emotion in football. It's the emotional equivalent of walking through a field of rakes while blindfolded. You know one of them is going to get you. You just don't know when.

The second leg in Florence awaits. The Stadio Artemio Franchi. Italian teams at home in Europe with nothing to lose. A manager who's just been humiliated on the road. An atmosphere that will make Selhurst Park look like a library reading group. Everything points to drama.

Will Palace hold on? Probably. A 3-0 lead is a 3-0 lead, even if a certain club in Istanbul once proved otherwise. But here's the thing: the moment Glasner said "special," he opened a door. And through that door, anything can walk in.

I'm not saying Palace are going to bottle it. I'm saying the universe heard the word "special" and smiled. And that smile has never, ever meant anything good.

Sleep well, Palace fans. The return leg is only a week away.