AMONG the most important relationships at a football club are between the manager, the club secretary and the chairman.

Without the secretary's help, a manager will struggle as the secretary will take care of all the responsibilities outside the playing side.

But the manager must feel that the chairman has absolute confidence in him, and not just through what he says in the media.

In that respect, it's very similar to the relationship between a manager and a player and I think Steve Guinan is an example of a player who has benefited from this.

Steve has had a lot of clubs without really establishing himself and he's a player who needs that belief in him from a manager and coach. He definitely has that here.

A chairman can easily undermine a manager with the odd subtle comment so I was very lucky when I got my first job at Shrewsbury to have an extremely steady chairman in Tim Yates.

The secretary had been a player and a coach himself and he was a terrific help to a 'wet behind the ears' manager but the chairman gave me the confidence that I could work with the players without looking over my shoulders all the time.

One of the questions I'm still asked is 'How did you get on with Doug Ellis?'.

The answer is that I got on with him all right. He did take a bigger than normal interest in football matters and was desperate to be part of the football scene, but you took him for what he was - a successful businessman with a big ego.

But I like to feel I had a good working relationship with him. We came from the same area, around Ellesmere Port, and he would often come around to our place and talk about anything but football.

At Wolves, I found myself in the unusual position of seeing the chairman sacked - I'm not sure whether it was because he'd not consulted with the owners, the Gallagher brothers, about allowing me to spend £64,000 on Steve Bull and Andy Thompson.

But then eventually came Jack Hayward and again we had a good working relationship, perhaps because he lived in the Bahamas!

I had the task of talking to a managers' degree course at Warwick University and told them that as with all relationships it's something that has to be worked at.

A chairman will often not have a clue about football but he does want to know what's going on.