It’s the most wonderful time of the year - especially if you’re a football fan.

The Premier League will be staging 40 games in 17 days over the Christmas-New Year break. It’s a crucial period that always tends to shape the title race; it’s too early for teams to win anything, of course, but they can lose touch with the leaders with a run of poor form and drop out of contention.

And that goes for the jostling for the European places, too, and the relegation battle.

As players, you always look forward to this part of the season, because you’re playing all the time. You’re not celebrating Christmas like you’re accustomed to, but quickly grow to love it.

Best of all, the timezone is very friendly to Australia. You can wake up a little early (but not too early) and smash some Christmas leftovers for breakfast, watch cricket all day, then squeeze in some A-League, and stay up to watch more Premier League at night. If you need to, you can always take a nap, which you’ll probably end up doing anyway, depending on how much you’ve eaten.

What more could you want?

To save you the trouble, I’ve had a look through the schedule and picked out the best games to watch.

Welcome to Mark Bosnich’s guide to the best Christmas fixtures in the Premier League. Credit: Matt Willis/Getty

This is a massive one, straight away.

Both of these sides are in the Champions League, but they’ve having very different seasons. Chelsea are flying in the........

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