Why Ben Chilwell was furious for Chelsea as Conor Gallagher has his Jurgen Klopp moment

Chelsea perfectly encapsulated the best and worst of their current position in what was a hugely entertaining but often frustrating 0-0 draw against Aston Villa. The result means that Mauricio Pochettino's men will play eight matches in the first six weeks of 2024, compare that to the four games Arsenal will have and the final half an hour at Stamford Bridge makes sense.

Despite putting on perhaps their best pressing performance of the season — it was one thing to take candy from the baby that Middlesbrough posed as on Tuesday night and quite another to do it with the Premier League's third best team currently — it was the same old final third issues that cost Chelsea a big win. Having hammered six past Championship opposition earlier in the week it seemed that Cole Palmer used up all his end product.

Most of the performance was extremely impressive, though. Djordje Petrovic produced several big moments in the Chelsea net while a defence of centre-backs held things together and offered outputhaving been disrupted by the late loss of Levi Colwill. Alfie Gilchrist was solid on the right and Moises Caicedo once more anchored things.

There was to be no breakthrough though and even extending the unbeaten run at Stamford Bridge to ten games, part of a wider seven wins in ten in all competitions, couldn't totally wipe out the slightly disappointing end to such a strong showing for large periods. Here, football.london looks at some of the finer points from the night.

Raised in the Villa academy, Carney Chukwuemeka was never going to be a popular man to supporters of the opposition on Friday. He was a late substitute in the game — something Villa fans will say is just dessert for abandoning his career in the Midlands in the hope of