Eight goals and three red cards – Chelsea’s most entertaining Boxing Day game ever

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Chelsea won’t be playing on Boxing Day in 2025, instead taking on Aston Villa on the 27th December at Stamford Bridge.

It’s one of just three seasons in which Chelsea haven’t played on Boxing Day during the Premier League, with a number of hugely entertaining games being played on the 26th through the years.

The best of the bunch was undoubtedly the game which occurred during the 2007/08 season, when Chelsea were part of arguably the game of the season.

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Chelsea’s most entertaining Boxing Day fixture in history

The Blues hosted Aston Villa on Boxing Day in 2007, with Avram Grant at the helm following the recent departure of Jose Mourinho for the first time.

The game got off to a nightmare start, with Villa taking a quick two goal lead following a rare error from Petr Cech.

After this, Zak Knight was sent off after giving away a penalty, which was dispatched by Andriy Shevchenko on the stroke of half-time.

The Ukrainian didn’t enjoy the best spell at Stamford Bridge, but he showed exactly what he can do when he struck a superb equaliser after 50 minutes.

Brazilian defender Alex’s trademark was long-range free-kicks, however it was him skipping through the defence to strike home a goal that put the Blues ahead.

They weren’t able to stay in the lead for too long though following an equaliser from Martin Laursen.

Chelsea’s misery was compounded when Ricardo Carvalho was sent off with 10 minutes to go, leaving the game on an absolute knife-edge.

However, the Stamford Bridge crowd was sent into delirium when a Michael Ballack free-kick found the net with just two minutes to go.

There was more drama to come though. As Villa pushed for another leveller, Ashley Cole was adjudged to have handled the ball on the line to keep it out in the final seconds.

He was sent off, and Gareth Barry made no mistake from the spot to bring an end to a ludicrous game of football.

Chelsea were fighting for the Premier League title right until the final day of this season, however ended up two points behind Manchester United with a significantly worse goal difference.

A win would ultimately have made no difference to the outcome of the season, although it is certainly one of the occasions where the Blues will have looked back and felt they could have done better.