Guus Hiddink admits Chelsea face transition period without Champions League

Interim boss Guus Hiddink admits Chelsea face a period of uncertainty and transition in the absence of Champions League football.

The Blues were dumped out of Europe as Paris Saint-Germain won 2-1 at Stamford Bridge for a 4-2 aggregate success in the last-16 tie on Wednesday.

Chelsea are well adrift of qualifying through the Premier League - the Blues are 10th, 10 points behind fourth-placed Manchester City with nine games remaining - 10 months after winning the title.

"Chelsea is now in a transition period," said Hiddink, who has restored stability following a turbulent start to the season under Jose Mourinho.

"They have to see how to go on and try to regain the lost terrain where Chelsea used to be. Chelsea must consider its short [term] future, and how to handle this."

Diego Costa cancelled out Adrien Rabiot's opener to give Chelsea hope of at least forcing extra time, but Zlatan Ibrahimovic put the game beyond the Blues with a second-half strike.

Rabiot's finish allowed PSG to take control of the tie with an early away goal, and Hiddink felt his side afforded their opponents too much respect from kick-off.

"I am disappointed," he told the club's website. "When you analyse the game we started too respectfully in the first 10 or 15 minutes, but they are a team who know the short possession game very well and you must be careful not to be outplayed in the first part of the match.

"We were too respectful but later on, at 1-0 down, we lost that wrong respect and we tried to defend more forcefully, we won duels and we got a deserved equaliser.

"There were chances both ways after that in the first half. In the second half we pushed, we tried to make it 2-1. We had chances to score in the 65th minute, we didn't do so and in the 67th minute with a little attack they killed the game."