Mark McGhee will see the best chairman he has ever worked with tomorrow.

It is too early in their relationship for Albion's Dick Knight to receive such an accolade.

The honour goes instead to Theo Paphitis, the outgoing chairman of Millwall.

McGhee parted company with Millwall just over a year ago. He had taken them as far as he felt he could and was fed-up with Paphitis increasingly trying to influence team affairs.

The Albion manager nevertheless still offers a glowing appraisal of the south London club's supremo, who is quitting at the end of the season, as he prepares for tomorrow's return to his former club.

McGhee said: "Up to the point where I left we had worked together brilliantly, the chairman and I, and he was becoming as frustrated as I was that we couldn't find a striker.

"He was encroaching on me more and more, in the nicest possible way. In the end I couldn't work like that. That combined with my frustration in not being able to take things any further meant it was the right time to leave.

"I left on good terms. He was good to me when I left. He paid up my contract. We still speak and I still wish them well. I had a lovely time there.

"I've had good chairmen, going back to John Madejski at Reading and Martin George at Leicester. Jonathan Hayward was a fantastic guy to work with at Wolves but in terms of influencing me as a manager Theo has been the best.

"I don't include Dick in that because I am still working with him and I can only really judge that at the end of it.

"Theo was great for me in the sense that he was demanding. He was always challenging. You had to be thinking ahead of him and have the answers, which is a good thing.

"Any manager who thinks that is pressure a chairman shouldn't be bringing them is kidding themselves, especially in this day and age.

"He was good for me because he kept the pressure on. It challenged me all the time and that helped me."

Millwall were ninth in Division Two when McGhee took over at The Den in September 2000.

By the time he left in October 2003 they were eighth in the First Division, the same as they are now, having gone up as champions before finishing fourth and ninth.

The Premiership promotion near-miss in 2001-02 coincided with a catalogue of unfortunate incidents which conspired against McGhee in his efforts to maintain the progress Millwall had made under him. The riot which followed a narrow exit from the play-offs against Birmingham at The Den had devastating repercussions.

The football authorities, pushed to the edge by Millwall's notorious supporters, considered closing the club down until Paphitis saved the day with a prohibitive membership scheme.

Attendances halved overnight which, combined with the collapse of ITV Digital, denied McGhee funds to strengthen the squad.

McGhee, through no fault of his own, then faced a dressing room revolt as well. Most of Millwall's top players, like Tim Cahill and Brighton-born Paul Ifill, were out of contract after they had won promotion to the First Division.

They were promised success-related contract improvements, but the club reneged following the Birmingham riot and loss of revenue from the ITV Digital deal.

The players' dismay manifested itself with a 6-0 home drubbing by Rotherham on the opening day of the season.

McGhee's problems didn't end there. Richard Sadlier, "the best young striker in the country", had to retire through injury and he lost the service of two key members of his backroom team in tragic circumstances.

Ray Harford died and former Albion manager Steve Gritt was given compassionate leave to be with his dying daughter.

"We were looking around, as we are doing here, for players for free and trying to squeeze things out of people that probably wasn't there," McGhee said.

"We struggled for a striker, because we didn't have money to go and buy someone of serious quality.

"I felt I had squeezed every drop out of the players that I could without the injection of a couple of better quality players.

"I was struggling to find any answers. There was no more and there hasn't been since I left. They needed more than just a change of management. They seem to continually be struggling to find a striker combination to get goals.

"They have been through about a dozen strikers since I went, including loans and purchases. They've spent a few quid and still don't seem to have found the answer. I took Kevin Muscat and Darren Ward there. They were the only two players I signed, because there was no money.

"At the same time, in achieving what I did, we also sold Steven Reid and Lucas Neill for substantial money, so the club was ahead in terms of income even though we had improved from the middle of the Second Division to near the top of the First. Nobody could have any complaints about my performance there."

That won't, of course, stop some Millwall supporters giving McGhee a hard time tomorrow.

"I think I'll get a mixed reception," he admitted.

"I don't think they are the type of fans that will ever particularly take anyone to their heart. They do think they are unique and they are in a sense.

"If I get a half-decent reception that will be fine. I'm not looking for anything more but I have absolutely no doubts about what I achieved there."