The two men on the touchline barely exchanged a glance, two men bound by nothing more than a common mistress. It always seems to end in tears for a manager who engages with Roman Abramovich, but Guus Hiddink is quickly building the impression of a man who can control and perhaps ultimately tame the Chelsea beast, having insisted that their short-term relationship will be on his own terms.

Claudio Ranieri, who now seems like a distant predecessor, will have other ideas, feeling that Juventus can overturn a slender deficit when his former club travel to Turin for the second leg of the Champions League first knockout round tie on March 10. But for now, after victories by a single goal in his first two games in charge, Chelsea under Hiddink no longer seem like the soft touch they were becoming.

These are still early days and their lead over Juventus, courtesy of Didier Drogba’s twelfth-minute goal, is fragile, but if Hiddink’s brief is simply to stabilise Chelsea and to make them competitive between now and May, the progress over the past fortnight is encouraging.

The quality of Chelsea’s performance should not be overstated — they peaked in the first 20 minutes and had badly run out of steam by the end, looking susceptible to what would have been a damaging away goal — but Hiddink has already done the difficult part, injecting some vigour and self-belief into a squad who looked crestfallen in the dark final weeks of the ill-fated Luiz Felipe Scolari regime.

Petr Cech looks assured once more, John Terry and Frank Lampard are leading by example and, most encouragingly of all, Drogba looks like a centre forward who wants to play football, having spent too long feeling sorry for himself since José Mourinho left Stamford Bridge in September 2007.

It will take something a little more sustained before Drogba can start proclaiming that he is back to the form of the 2006-07 campaign, when at times he was unplayable, but this was much more like it. From the very start he was up for it and, having done the hard work for Nicolas Anelka at Villa Park on Saturday, this time he was quick to claim his reward, running on to a delightful reverse pass from Salomon Kalou, moving in for the kill and bouncing a shot past Gianluigi Buffon to spark heady celebrations among his team-mates, Michael Ballack being the first to join him.

For the next ten minutes or so, it seemed that this could be a special night at Stamford Bridge, with the feel-good factor of Hiddink’s nascent reign blowing away the sense of nostalgia that accompanied Ranieri’s return.

Chelsea performed impressively in the opening quarter of the game, with Drogba unfortunate not to score a second goal when he sent a header wide from Lampard’s inswinging corner, but Juventus, showing far more spirit and a little more quality than either Roma or Inter Milan produced in the Anglo-Italian encounters on Tuesday, slowly established some kind of foothold. Tiago, another Chelsea old boy, and Mohamed Sissoko, once of Liverpool, were doing their best to assert themselves against the home team’s midfield trio of Ballack, Lampard and John Obi Mikel.

Midway through the first half, Tiago, an underrated member of Mourinho’s first title-winning Chelsea squad in 2005, slipped a clever pass behind the home defence to set up Alessandro Del Piero, but the striker’s shot was well saved by Cech, diving to his right.

Juventus were not out of it by any means, but at that stage they had the look of a well-organised side in the top eight of the Barclays Premier League rather than a team befitting one of the proudest clubs in Europe. That much was reflected by some of the names in their squad — Olof Mellberg at right back, Sissoko and Tiago in midfield and Alex Manninger, the former Arsenal goalkeeper, on the substitutes’ bench, all of them rejected or passed over by some of English football’s elite.

A rasping shot by Anelka apart, the second half belonged — or at least should have belonged — to Juventus, who came back into the game around the hour mark. Despite losing Mauro Camoranesi and Tiago to thigh and facial injuries respectively, Ranieri’s team surged forward in search of the away goal they craved, Marco Marchionni, a substitute, sending a shot just over the crossbar from the edge of the penalty area.

With Ballack, Kalou and others tiring, Chelsea began to retreat, but while this was a problem in a collective sense, it was encouraging in the case of Drogba, who could be seen filling in on the left wing and even, on one notable occasion, in a deep midfield role when his team-mates were caught out of position in the closing stages.

Hiddink surveyed his options on the substitutes’ bench. They were not appealing, which is one reason why Scolari was often so reluctant to stray beyond plan A. But the Dutchman sent on Florent Malouda in place of Kalou on the right wing and then Michael Mancienne, the England Under-21 defender, to great acclaim in an unfamiliar midfield role in place of Ballack.

It was all hands to the pump in the closing stages and while it did not make for pretty or in any way convincing football, it was pleasing to see Chelsea performing as a team again, battling through potential adversity, with Drogba as eager as anyone to put in a shift.

Stoppage time was tense, with Pavel Nedved cutting inside and sending a fierce shot just wide of Cech’s left-hand post from 25 yards. Ranieri felt that Juventus had merited the away goal that would have changed the complexion of the tie, but Chelsea just about held firm against the nerves that were setting in.

At the end, finally, there was a smile, a handshake and a slap on the back for Hiddink from the Juventus coach, but Ranieri will cling to the hope that his ultimate revenge over Chelsea and Abramovich, that ruthless, unforgiving mistress, is still to come.

Chelsea (4-3-3): P Cech — J Bosingwa, Alex, J Terry, A Cole — M Ballack (sub: M Mancienne, 81min), J O Mikel, F Lampard — S Kalou (sub: F Malouda, 72), D Drogba, N Anelka. Substitutes not used: Hilário, B Ivanovic, P Ferreira, M Stoch, F Di Santo. Booked: Ballack.

Juventus (4-4-2): G Buffon — O Mellberg, N Legrottaglie, G Chiellini, C Molinaro — M Camoranesi (sub: M Marchionni, 52), M Sissoko (sub: D Trezeguet, 86), Tiago (sub: C Marchisio, 62), P Nedved — A Del Piero, Amauri. Substitutes not used: A Manninger, Z Grygera, C Poulsen, V Iaquinta. Booked: Molinaro, Sissoko, Marchisio.

Referee: O Benquerença (Portugal).