Football London reported that Chelsea will host Crystal Palace on Wednesday, December 2 at 19:30 on Sky Sports, then Liverpool at Stamford Bridge on Saturday, December 5 at 12:30 on TNT Sports. The trip to Manchester City at the Etihad Stadium is set for Saturday, December 12 at 17:30 on Sky Sports.
The Aston Villa game is less tidy. Football London listed that match for Monday, December 21 at 20:00 on Sky Sports, but also said it would be moved to Saturday, December 19 at 20:00 if either club reaches the latter stages of the Carabao Cup. That kind of scheduling footnote matters in December because the issue is not just who you play, but how often you have to recover, prepare and go again.
According to Football London, the wider reshuffle reflects UEFA competitions still running through that stretch of the calendar, forcing revisions to the festive schedule. Broadcast picks always distort somebody’s week; in this part of the season they also cut into the little bits of control coaches like to imagine they still have.
Chelsea’s run, as now set out, starts with a midweek home game against Palace, turns quickly into a lunchtime meeting with Liverpool, and then sends them to Manchester City the following weekend. None of that decides a season by itself, but it is the kind of sequence that makes rotation less theoretical and mistakes more expensive.
Football London also pointed to comments from Xabi Alonso on the demands of the English winter schedule, including the lack of a Christmas break and the volume of matches. The old complaint survives because the calendar keeps proving it useful.
What Chelsea have, for now, is a December schedule with three fixed broadcast changes and a Villa fixture still carrying a cup-related asterisk.
Gabriel Fenech 
Isla Camilleri 
Dua Mifsud