When Neil Warnock faced the media after Cardiff City’s relegation back to the Championship, the figure he cut was hardly a broken one.
Instead, he looked a rejuvenated character, up for the next battle - be that in south Wales or not.
If this is the end of Cardiff’s Neil Warnock journey, then it finished in typical fashion.
The defeat against Crystal Palace exposed their limitations at this level, but each Palace blow revealed their strength too.
Palace had the technically superior players, but Cardiff matched them in terms of application and desire - fighting right to the end and forging more than enough chances that they couldn’t always take.
Try as they might, Cardiff just lacked that required quality to get the job done.
It was the perfect microcosm to the Bluebirds’ season.
Football logic and conventional wisdom dictated that Cardiff were second-best to their established opponents - Palace boss Roy Hodgson admitted his players thought as much afterwards, believing they deserved to win by more.
Yet they didn’t.
Although it’s little consolation, Cardiff fought football logic and conventional wisdom and nearly won - on the day and over the course of the season.
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Logic and wisdom put Cardiff in its supposed place eventually, but they had to go the full twelve rounds to do so.
But that’s what Cardiff under Warnock have always done - defied the established wisdom and logic.
The odds have long been stacked against Cardiff.
Before the season started, the world and sundry had already relegated Cardiff before a ball had been kicked.
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It would take a an improbable set of results for them not to break Derby’s Premier League record for the lowest points tally, according to some.
Yet here we are after match 37 of a 38 game season, only now assured of what Cardiff’s fate is.
Expectations are like fine china. The harder you hold them, the more likely they are to crack.
And given how it seemed everyone was so certain Cardiff would be an unmitigated disaster, it was little surprise those ultimately unrealistic predictions were proven foolhardy by Warnock and his side.
Cardiff went into this season with, on paper, a Championship squad. One that had seen the majority of it sliding towards League One barely a year prior.
Remember, the first ever starting XI that Warnock named in his Cardiff reign, in a 2-1 victory over Bristol City, contained seven players that would be integral parts of his Premier League side.
Conventional wisdom dictated that anything other than a return to the Championship would be an anomaly.
They may well have ended back down there, but they took it right to the end of the season and defied expectations.
The rub of the green didn’t always go Cardiff’s way. Their ultimate lack of quality at this level and a out-and-out goal threat hardly helped them either.
And it's impossible to qualify what impact the tragedy of Emiliano Sala had on the club.
In the end, logic prevailed.
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But up until the last round, this Cardiff team had it on the ropes.
No wonder Warnock is up for another battle.
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