Chelsea vs Crystal Palace Timeline & H2H Stats

There is a funny thing about the London-based football clubs, which is that there are loads of them. As a result, when they play one another there is a distinct lack of any sort of bitterness or enmity between the supporters in the same way that there might be if you were looking at the Merseyside derby, say, or the match between the two Manchester clubs. Even Crystal Palace themselves have a fiercer rivalry against Brighton & Hove Albion than they do against other clubs based in London. That isn’t to say that the two sets of fans don’t want to win the match when Chelsea and Crystal Palace go up against one another, of course.

The desire to win is as strong as it is any time a competitive team takes to the field, but it is difficult to have bragging rights over a club that is based in an entirely different part of the city than it might be if they were based in a smaller location. Crystal Palace have bloodied Chelsea’s nose over the years, but it would be a lie to suggest that this is anything other than a one-sided battle. Between the 10th of March 2018 and the 12th of February, 2024, for example, Chelsea won 14 times in a row in all competitions, scoring 33 goals to the Eagles’ eight. Historically, this has been a match that the Blues have loved to have on their calendar.

Cup Meetups

The first time that Chelsea faced Crystal Palace in a competitive match came in the FA Cup on the 18th of November 1906. The Blues had only formed the year before, which might help to explain why it was that Palace ran out 7-1 winners. They drew in their next encounter, which was in the Second Division, but then lost twice on the bounce, including another FA Cup appearance. In spite of the fact that the sides haven’t always been in the same divisions as one another, they have ended up playing against each other in cups a surprising number of times. That is especially true when you consider they weren’t meeting in finals.

Chelsea were drawn to face the Eagles at home in the FA Cup in the February of 1970, winning 4-1, then played then again in the FA Cup the following year. That time they drew 2-2, requiring a replay, which the Blues duly won 2-0 before having to play Palace in the First Division just a week later. Another FA Cup draw pitted them against one another in 1976, this time seeing the Eagles emerge as winners, then in 1990 they played in the Zenith Data Systems Cup, which a competition put together to allow sides to make more money in the wake of being banned from Europe because of the Heysel Stadium disaster. Chelsea won, of course.

Chelsea’s Full Match History Against Crystal Palace