High-wire Hiddink needs the right blend for Barca

ALL managers are engaged in balancing acts of varying degrees of complexity, but ahead of the game that will ultimately define his Chelsea tenure, Guus Hiddink must feel as if he is perched on the high-wire without a safety net.

Ostensibly, Chelsea enter Wednesday’s Champions League decider with Barcelona as marginal favourites, having stymied the Catalan cavaliers in the Camp Nou last week. The reality, however, is more complex.

Hiddink, mindful of his side’s failure to plunder an away goal, must somehow find a way of combining the resilience which so frustrated Barca with a serrated attacking edge. One without the other simply will not do. No wonder the Dutchman has spent most of the last week agonising over which system is best suited to thwarting the La Liga leaders.