"?Former Chelsea striker and manager Gianluca Vialli has suggested that the club might have been premature in pushing Jose Mourinho through the Stamford Bridge exit after a terrible start to the season, but is backing incoming boss Antonio Conte for success.
"I don't think I would have changed the manager," Vialli explained, speaking to Goal.com.
"Obviously things improved slightly after Guus Hiddink took over, he is very good at giving everybody confidence and playing things down and so on, but I didn't see that huge of an improvement."
Hiddink steadied the ship in his second spell at the club having inherited a team from Mourinho that was in total disarray and even nervously looking behind to the relegation zone mere months after being crowned Premier League champions.
The Portuguese coach was given the boot in mid December a few days after defeat at the hands of Leicester, although Vialli thinks the situation could have still been resolved without.
"Jose could have stayed and sorted things out his own way. It is always difficult. Now, they definitely need someone to turn over a new leaf and start another Chelsea successful era," he said.
But, notwithstanding Mourinho's departure, Vialli believes the team he guided to FA Cup success in 2000 have found the right man for the job going forward in Conte.
Describing his former Juventus team-mate as a "great manager", he said, "I spoke to players at Juventus who have worked with Antonio Conte, and some of the greatest managers, and they reckon that Antonio Conte is the best.
"His team always plays with humility, with pride, with controlled aggression, his teams never give up and he is prepared to work really hard to achieve great things. So he creates that culture.
"He is not a disciplinarian, he's just somebody that demands that the players try as hard as they possibly can in training and on matchdays."
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