Is Hiddink the Cure at Chelsea?- I don't think so.

The sacking of Luis felipe Scolari as Chelsea manager was as unsurprising as it was premature. I think he had lost interest long before the snow. Scolari came into Chelsea with a big reputation based mainly on his success with Brazil in the 2002 World Cup. The achievement of being a World Cup winning manager should not be underestimated if only because there are so few of them and it is the games most testing and prestigious competition. He subsequently took the fading embers of Portugal's Golden Generation together with Ronaldo to the final of Euro 2004 (as hosts), the semi final in Germany '06 and while they didn't do so well at Euro 2008, by then it didn't really matter because he had already signed up to become the fourth manager of the Abramovich era at Chelsea.

He had already turned down England because of media intrusions in his rather banal private life but the lure of Chelsea was impossible to resist. If he hadn't done so already, his contract with Chelsea would secure his family for generations to come. As a man from humble beginnings, the magnitude of £6.5 million a year for two years can't have been lost on Scolari.

Scolari, I'm sure was a wealthy man anyway but I wonder what exactly it is a manager does to command this kind of a salary. The longevity of Alex Ferguson and the England's improvement (however tentative) under Capello shows that they must do something but it's difficult to capture the essence of it. Whatever it is, Scolari didn't seem to have it at Chelsea. Capello's cause was helped by taking over England at a very low ebb. Even Alex Ferguson has been given a lot of money to spend over the years and more importantly the time to allow his teams to gel.

Scolari didn't have these luxuries. Chelsea were widely tipped to win back the Premier League this season having come so close to securing the double last year. At the time the feeling was that the players were there but not the manager. Scolari apparently held the key.

Unfortunately for Scolari, he was denied any real cash to spend during the summer. Deco is a great player but Chelsea already have too many central midfield players and the impact of Bosingwa as a full back was always going to be limited. Petr Cech, Drogba and Ballack have laboured this season and look like players "in need of a fresh challenge". Chelsea lack width and they are an ageing side. It was always going to be a difficult job for Scolari and an impossible one perhaps in the absence of a fully fit Drogba, Essien and Joe Cole.

One indictment on Scolari's short reign is that he didn't try hard enough to get the most out of the players. He made up for the lack of width by pushing the full back's forward even though this left them vulnerable at the back. When he tightened up the defence again, they simply didn't look like scoring. He seemed determined to play Ballack, Lampard and Deco together no matter what, yet refused to play two strikers even when Drogba and Anelka were in good form.

There is no doubt that individually these players are good enough to mount a title challenge but Scolari failed to mould them into a cohesive unit. It always looked like he was trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. It could be that he was under orders to play certain players and it's clear he had little control over transfers.

The wages are as good a reason as any why Scolari would have accepted these terms but if that was the case it was always destined to fail.

Is Hiddink any more likely to succeed? I don't think so. He has been reasonably successful at international level though I think his approach in the Euro 2008 semi final against Spain cost Russia the game. The linesman cheated Italy in 2002 and I wouldn't attach too much weight to the achievement of qualifying with Australia. I do think he is a very good manager, I just don't think he is a miracle worker.

His appointment isn't going to right the fundamental wrongs at Chelsea. The squad is unbalanced, key players are injured or unfit, no money is available to improve the squad and there would appear to be a lot of interference at boardroom level. I expect there to be an initial improvement as there always is with a new manager (for some reason the investigation of which is worthy of a post of it's own) but it won't be long before their faults start to cause trouble again.

Guus won't mind, the money and the prestige will take his mind off the teams failings. In the summer one of two things will happen, Mourinho will return if Abramovich stumps up the cash to take the club forward or Hiddink will stay to oversee the dismantling of the club and pave the way for Abramovich's exit.

It's all Good for Guus.