As Wilfried Zaha celebrated his equaliser with a besotted Crystal Palace crowd, it was easy to remember the days when people said he did too many tricks, bought too many cars and had too many relatives in his entourage.

Back then, Palace’s saviour against West Ham at the weekend was depicted as a raw, ungovernable talent from a tough south London background who was on the classic too-much-too-young trajectory. His transfer to Manchester United for £10 million as Sir Alex Ferguson’s last purchase was often depicted as career-immolation: a premature step into the big time for a kind of mustang winger who lacked the maturity and self-discipline to handle such a step.

Four and a half years on from that move north, Zaha’s return from injury has lit a fire under Palace. Even before he came back to score against Chelsea and West Ham, and lift the whole team with his positivity, his eyes radiated the kind of optimism you seldom see in a player representing a side who have lost their first seven games. His late equaliser against West Ham at Selhurst Park was the archetypal game-changing raid of a player who’s not prepared to accept a bad outcome and has the talent to stop it happening.