Carlo Ancelotti has explained why "mutual trust" has to be a key part of his relationship with Farhad Moshiri at Everton.
And the Blues boss has opened up on why he has to explain his tactical decisions to Moshiri and the club's powers including Marcel Brands.
Ancelotti was speaking as the special guest at the annual Liverpool University Lucrezia Zaina Bequest lecture on Thursday night.
The Everton manager talked about his career as a player and manager and discussed Italian life and culture over the course of an hour, via a Zoom call.
Ancelotti, whose appearance prompted over 1,000 questions to be submitted, was asked about 'managing up' at football clubs and how he sees relationships with presidents and the board of directors.
"First of all, with the relationship with the owner, you need to understand the owner has given you the key to manage the team, to manage the club," Ancelotti explained.
"So he gives you a lot of responsibility. And so the relationship is really important between the owner, the club and the manager. "
Ancelotti continued: "Mutual trust, you need to have confidence in your manager and you have to support your manager because I think that the manager is alone, he has to manage the team alone and he has to have support.
"Because if the players know that there is no good relationship between the club and the manager you can have problems, on the pitch and outside of the pitch.
"So the relationship is really important but after that they give to me the responsibility to manage the team and do the line-up and I have to take this responsibility.
"There were a lot of rumours in the past that the owners were involved in the line-up but I never had an owner involved in the line-up.
"They can give to you advice, they want to talk to you about tactics but I think that is right and I have to explain to the club, to the owner and to the technical director my decisions. This is absolutely normal."
