Brian Caldwell: Roland Wycherley has given me full backing at Shrewsbury Town

Brian Caldwell was keen to delve straight into the topic at hand.

"I'd heard all about the chairman before I came here," he said. "I'd read a lot of stuff online but I can honestly say that the chairman's been absolutely brilliant with me.

"He's been very welcoming to Shropshire, he's tried to help me as much as he can, to make sure me and my wife are personally settled here."

He and chairman Roland Wycherley share a very close relationship. Something new to Caldwell, who experienced different set-ups at St Mirren and Ayr United in Scotland.

So much so that it has shaped Shrews' chief executive, who's been in the game for two decades.

"I like to get my own way and I'm used to running a club," Caldwell told the Shropshire Star.

"He hits me with 'I've been a chairman here for 20 years'.

"Well I've been in football for 20 years. This is my third club, I've got a better and a wider range of experience of different clubs and what things can work and can't work.

"I've been used to a chairman coming in once a week for 10 minutes for a catch-up. 'Have we got enough money in the bank?' 'Is everything OK?' 'Have you got everything you need?' and then 'see you Saturday'.

"The chairman's a very passionate supporter of the club, which is brilliant. He's honestly backed me with everything I've said I'm doing.

"There seems to be this idea that he's a dictator but I can honestly say in my year that I've never found that. I've always said 'this is what I'm doing', 'I'll keep you in the loop about everything I'm doing and everything that's happening'.

"But I don't think on a day-to-day basis the chairman needs to be making decisions. That's the chief exec's role and he's backed me 100 per cent with everything I've done in the past."

They both seek the best for the football club, meaning that decisions don't clash too often.

Caldwell added: "We're not going to agree on everything, we all have opinions.

"To be honest there's only been two or three things we've probably disagreed on over the year – that's actually very good! I've got a really good relationship with him.

"I do call 'a spade a spade' and I think he respects that I'm honest and talk to him the way he should be.

"I'll always be honest with him and I'd rather tell him what I think than telling him something he wants to hear because that's the kind of person I am."

The conversation moves onto the future. 'Potential' is a word that regularly crops up.

Caldwell – and Wycherley – are absolutely desperate, under the exciting stewardship of Paul Hurst, that the club's potential can be met.

"You look at Burton, they've done phenomenally well. Walsall last year got to the play-offs," Caldwell went on.

"Paul's points average in the time he's been here, where he hasn't had his own players for a lot of the time, if you look at that over the course of the full season then you'd hope we can be among the top clubs. Look at Fleetwood just now, another example of how it can be done.

"There seems to be a couple of clubs within touching distance of the play-offs. Rochdale probably have one of the lowest budgets in the league and look at how they've done. You don't have to have one of the highest budgets in the league."

Far from relegation rivals Bury's high-profile and lucrative captures of former Premier League players, Caldwell wants it done the proper way.

"One of the major factors for me when I looked at the club, one of the first things, was the finances," he added.

"I could see that the club was in a positive cash way. One of the best finances in the English Football League, which is testament to everything before and what the chairman's done here.

"That's really important to me as a football club, to live within our means. I've come to St Mirren who had no debt, to here that has no debt. A nice new stadium, it's very similar in a lot of ways.

"I've always been used to football being a sustainable business. It's important that, whatever we do going forward, to live within our means. We have a wage structure that we'll obviously keep to."

Playing it safe, securing the club's future and 'living within your means' does not dampen any ambition.

"No it definitely doesn't mean a lack of ambition," he fiercely retaliated.

"There's certainly ambition. The chairman wants us to be in the Championship, we all want to be in the Championship, but not by putting us into debt. I think we need to be clever about how we do things.

"Hopefully when Lidl takes place, that makes us even more financially solid as well.

"It means if Paul identifies someone we need a transfer fee for that potentially we see as an investment, we can support him on that. We do have cash and reserves.

"It's also important what we do in the training ground, we can live within our means with the money identified for that, it's money that we've got."

The chief executive celebrated one year at the club last week and finished: "I want to be here in five years.

"There's a job here and work to be done. There's a lot of improvements we can make. I hope to be here for a good lengthy time and I don't want to just 'move'.

"There's a lot of unfinished business here."