ROY HODGSON laughed this week at the notion he could be 'friends' with his players.

The Fulham manager is too canny to have any special relation-ship with those he must tell they're not yet good enough for his team - or the others that still need a kick up the backside when they're not performing well enough.

As our Roy put it: "What can a 60-year-old man have in common with a 19-year-old?"

All the more reason then to heap praise on Guus Hiddink for the job he's doing at Chelsea.

Another manager into his seventh decade seems to be working wonders on the cosmopolitan bunch he found incapable of dispatching League One Southend in January at the first attempt, followed by a 0-0 with struggling Hull a little while after.

The scowling Luiz Felipe Scolari's failures in these three games were the full-stop to his short stay in SW6.

A man who, by the way, with typically straight face, said the reason why a third-tier journeyman outjumped his defence for Southend's equaliser in the home tie had nothing to do with the absence of John Terry.

So what could Hiddink have in common with the likes of Florent Malouda and Didier Drogba?

The 62-year-old Dutchman and the French-speaking pair 30 years his junior, are an odd trio to suddenly come good.

But any doubt about the pair's rejuvenation was laid to rest at Wembley last Saturday against Arsenal, surely. Transformation or what from the shadows they were under Scowlari?

This column has always said the Dutch travel well - and I have bigged up more than a few sublime artists to successfully make their living over here.

Name me the abject failures from across the North Sea that have played in the top flight?

It's not a long list, and 'Lucky Guus' is the latest from the house of Orange to get the best out of teams as diverse as South Korea and Australia in his managerial career.

Sure, you don't need to be mates with your players - but 90 per cent of the job as Guus knows, is making sure you understand what makes them tick.