HERE’S to the new boss — same as the old boss. Guus Hiddink had the victory he and his team needed in his first match in charge but the new Chelsea, as they were billed, looked much like the model that got Jose Mourinho sacked in September 2007, grinding out an amply deserved but uninspiring 1-0 victory to leapfrog Villa and take third place in the table.

Roman Abramovich, who tired of Mourinho’s pragmatism and yearned for something more flamboyant, seemed happy enough at the final whistle, applauding with his phalanx of lieutenants and hailing Hiddink as the new “Special One”.

Chelsea’s self-satisfaction was excusable. Hiddink, having had only a week in which to work the Dutch oracle with his new charges, has at least got them playing like a united team rather than some clique-ridden collection of sulky prima donnas. Their form had dipped in the weeks before Luiz Felipe Scolari was dismissed but they were the powerfully effective machine of old throughout the first half and should have won by a more convincing margin, John Terry having a header cleared off the line by Gareth Barry with Brad Friedel well beaten.

Martin O’Neill said on Friday that this was a match Chelsea could not afford to lose but made no mention of any pressures on his own team, which was taken as a tacit admission that Villa were not genuine title contenders. At no stage did they threaten to disabuse their manager here. Faced with their third match in seven days, one of the smallest squads in the Premier League was found wanting. Their England players in particular had been to the well once too often and looked desperately tired.

That 13-match unbeaten run ended with more of an exhausted whimper than a bang. They have another Uefa Cup match on Thursday in Moscow and the challenge of regaining their lost momentum is bound to be mentally and physically demanding. The fourth Champions League place is probably the best they can hope for.

Beyond the West Midlands, interest focused on Chelsea and the latest manager to try to fill Mourinho’s shiny size nines. The cast were entirely familiar, but the line-up less so. Scolari maintained that Chelsea did not have the right players for a 4-4-2 formation and tended to use only one striker — either Nicolas Anelka or Didier Drogba. The new broom swept out the old thinking and picked both. The result was instantly impressive, Frank Lampard’s neat turn and bisecting through-pass inviting Anelka to run on and beat Friedel from 12 yards with the cool expertise of a born finisher. That’s 21 goals and counting for the reborn French striker.

With Chelsea’s midfield dominant, it would have been 2-0 after half an hour but for the flying, one-handed save with which Friedel repelled Terry’s header from a Lampard corner.

The wingers on whom Villa’s attacking tactics depend made little worthwhile progress and when they did their crossing was poor. That said, they did have Petr Cech’s heart in his mouth once in the first half, when Ashley Young shivered the crossbar with a an impressive 20-yard free kick and Emile Heskey nodded the rebound horribly wide.

Barry made his goalline clearance from Terry early in the second half but the lack of the second goal that Chelsea always threatened kept Villa in with a shout and they began to fashion chances of their own. Gabriel Agbonlahor demanded a decent save from Cech, as did Barry from 20 yards, and suddenly Chelsea were reduced to familiar time-wasting ploys. They still came closer to scoring, however, with Jose Bosingwa and Ballack testing Friedel in the last 10 minutes.

Hiddink pronounced himself “very pleased and very satisfied”. Invited to elaborate, he said: “Villa had not been beaten for a long time, so it is pleasing to get the points. In the first half we played in a good, attacking way and were dominant in midfield, where we always had the extra man. The only thing wrong was that we didn’t do well enough in their box. In the second half they came at us with their air force and sometimes we were a bit too static in possession. As a principle, when you have the ball, you have to move — if you don’t, you ask for trouble. The movements don’t have to be big but they do have to be smart.”

In his first week, he said he had worked his players hard “not just physically but strategically”. The attitude in the dressing room was a pleasant surprise but he had seen fit to tell all and sundry “why you’re at a big club and what is expected”. Juventus at home on Wednesday in the Champions League will come as another reminder.

ASTON VILLA: Friedel 6, Cuellar 5, Knight 6, Davies 5 (Carew 70min), L Young 7, Milner 6, Petrov 5, Barry 6, A Young 6, Agbonlahor 6, Heskey 6

CHELSEA: Cech 6, Bosingwa 6, Alex 6, Terry 7, Ferreira 6, Mikel 6, Kalou 5 (Deco 55min, 5), Ballack 7, Lampard 8, Drogba 6 (Belletti 90min), Anelka 7