'This is the year of the underdog - and I love it!'

First Newcastle, now Crystal Palace. As I said on BBC One after Saturday's FA Cup final, 2025 is the year of the underdog - and I love it!

I know exactly how the Palace fans felt after seeing their side beat Manchester City, because I was there myself only a few weeks ago when Newcastle won the Carabao Cup final.

Like them, I had waited my entire life to see my team win a major trophy. For Palace supporters this is their first piece of silverware in their history and, from where I was doing my co-commentary at Wembley, I could tell how much it meant to them.

They reminded me of the Newcastle fans with the way they roared their team on from the moment they got into the ground. For most of the game they drowned the City supporters out, and I went through every emotion with them during the 90 minutes, and especially beyond.

You could see the agony on their faces when the board went up to show there would be 10 minutes of stoppage time, and when I looked around I saw everyone with their head in their hands - the same way I was when I was waiting for the final whistle in the same stadium against Liverpool.

I saw the joy and the tears afterwards too, when the celebrations were just getting started. A lot of them will have sore heads on Sunday and Monday, and I don't blame them one bit.

They knew they had a part to play if their team was going to beat City, and they did it - it was a great performance by Palace's players, but their fans were sensational too.

Now this is their moment and they should absolutely make the most of it - I know I did when it was finally Newcastle's turn to win something.

Usually you see a team lift a trophy and you ask 'what next?', but - apart from enjoying European football for the first time next season - the only thing Palace should be looking forward to right now is Tuesday's home game against Wolves, because there is going to be one heck of a party at Selhurst Park.

They will have to decide who they sell, or keep, in the summer because they have got some very talented players who other clubs may try to sign, but that's not something they need to think about now.

Instead, everyone connected to the club can simply revel in the glory of being FA Cup winners for the first time. It's an amazing achievement.

There were so many impressive individual performances from the Palace players, and I thought they were the better team too. They deserved their win, and they certainly gave everything to get it.

Whether it was blocking shots, crosses or passes, they all put their bodies on the line. There were so many times where they had two, three or even four men throwing themselves in the way in desperation, doing whatever they could to make a difference, and their determination to stop City was brilliant to watch.

Palace seemed to win every tackle, and it was getting the better of all those separate battles that got the team over the line in the end.

I don't think you can put Palace's victory down to any one thing, but they had that hard work allied with a gameplan that worked - they were happy to let City have the ball, defend deep and then try to hit them on the break.

To win the FA Cup you always need a bit of luck too, and perhaps they got that with the decision not to send off goalkeeper Dean Henderson for his handball outside his box when Erling Haaland ran through in the first half.

They got away with one there, because if I am a City player then I want that to be a red card and it probably should have been, but there was no luck about the saves Henderson made, including Omar Marmoush's penalty, and he was another of their heroes.

When City look back at what they could have done differently on Saturday, they will think a lot about that penalty and who should have taken it.

Pep Guardiola pretty much confirmed in his post-match interview that it was the players' responsibility to sort it out, but I am still amazed that Erling Haaland decided to give up a penalty in an FA Cup final.

Haaland has missed three penalties already this season and is only just back from injury, but he has still scored 30 goals in all competitions. If I am in his shoes, I am taking that penalty every time.

What made the situation even more fascinating was hearing Henderson talking after the game. While he obviously knew exactly where Marmoush was going to put his penalty, he said if Haaland had taken it he didn't have a clue which way he was going from the spot.

That was obviously City's big opportunity to level, but after that I don't think they really did enough to get anything out of the game.

Nico O'Reilly did have a decent chance before the end and he could have shot earlier, but instead he chose to cut back on to his left foot and was crowded out.

Other than that, they had all the ball, of course, in the second half but they did not really move the Palace defence around enough, or open them up at all despite all that pressure.

City need to get over this disappointment quickly because they have got a massive Premier League game against Bournemouth on Tuesday.

As things stand they are in sixth place and out of the Champions League places, so they really need to win it - in effect, it's another cup final for them.

Whether they finish in the top five or not, however, I can see there being a big turnover of players in Pep's squad over the summer.

We know Kevin de Bruyne is leaving and the writing appears to be on the wall for Jack Grealish as well - Guardiola preferred to bring a young kid, Claudio Echeverri, off the bench for his debut when he was desperate for a goal against Palace, rather than send on Grealish, a £100m player.

There could be a lot of other changes too, and there has to be really. This City team has been amazing but they have come to the end of their period of dominance and some fresh faces are needed to get them challenging for the Premier League title again.

Even if they spend big and bring a few players in, I am not sure whether they can get back to the levels they reached under Guardiola in the past few seasons, when they were the outstanding team in the country.

But some kind of improvement is clearly needed. Considering the heights they have hit, for them to be in sixth place with two games to go and without a trophy for the first time since 2016-17 has already made this a very poor season by their high standards.

Alan Shearer was speaking to BBC Sport's Chris Bevan at Wembley.