Steve Morison insists his sacking as Cardiff City manager was "unwarranted" last September and that losing the South Wales derby prompted "carnage" in this corner of the world.
Morison was sacked last September after only 10 games, with Cardiff languishing in 18th place despite an encouraging opening few performances. The former City boss was tasked with overhauling the squad, shipping 15 players out and bringing 17 in, but was given hardly any time to work with the squad he had assembled.
New managers with new philosophies came in and never quite struck the right blend. Understandable, really, given Morison had brought the players in to play a certain way and those principles changed with each subsequent managerial appointment.
The former Milwall striker himself admits it's been a tough eight months out of the game and he has had to take stock of his mental health, having been in football full-time for more than two decades.
Last week he was appointed the new manager of Hornchurch FC in the seventh tier of English football, but he said he narrowly missed out on jobs higher up the football pyramid in the intervening period.
“I lost my job in tough circumstances – I don’t think I warranted it,” Morison told the South London Press. “We were 10 games in, with a new squad. We had a better points-to-game ratio than the club ended up with.
“You leave with your head held high. I did everything asked of me. Could we have picked up a couple more results? Yeah. But could we also have dropped a couple more results? Also yeah. You wait to see if you get another opportunity. I didn’t expect to get another one in the Championship straight away but I thought I might get a League One or League Two one.
“Certain clubs liked the way I’d played football at Cardiff and the situation I’d dealt with. But maybe outside of Cardiff and Wales, not many people know what you have been doing because I suppose it is kind of off people’s radar.
“I found it amazing when we had the South Wales derby on and we had a really bad result in it (a 4-0 defeat last April). In Wales it is absolute carnage, in regards to the result, but you go over the bridge, back into England, and people didn’t even know it had happened.
“I had a couple of clubs where it looked like I was getting jobs and I lost out to people who have never had any experience as managers before – both subsequently have been sacked out of their roles. You get a bit frustrated with that because you feel you could’ve helped – I’d experienced that situation and the model of the other club, and what they wanted was everything that I’d done at Cardiff."
He said he felt the "time was right" to take on the job at Hornchurch, believing he could emulate his playing days by starting in non-League, like he did at Bishop's Stortford, before rising to the top, like he did in the Premier League with Norwich City.
Indeed, while it might have been a shock to see him drop from the Championship to the Isthmian Premier Division, he also deserves credit for taking a job and simply getting back in the game.
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“Everyone talks about mental well-being and you don’t think about it massively until it happens to you, or you have bad moments. For my state of mind, it just feels right. It feels nice," he added.
“People might think I’ve got an ego or have an opinion of me, I think that puts all that to bed, in terms of the fact I just love football. I want to be involved and I want to be a part of it. I want to be a part of something successful. Can we go to the next step? Whatever happens off the back of it, happens.”
So now to his new challenge. Hornchurch have failed to get promoted in the last two seasons, despite being right at the top of the table. They hope the appointment of Morison, who split opinion during his time in the Cardiff dugout, will give them that extra edge to get their noses over the line.
Morison knows, though, that Hornchurch will represent a big scalp for the Isthmian Premier teams, if only for the fact that the former Wales striker is their manager.
“I told [the Hornchurch players] that we’re going to have a target on our backs, even bigger than what we had – being one of the teams that always competes at that level," he added.
“We’re going to get stick but it’s going to be good fun. It’s not something I’m too worried about. It makes winning more enjoyable.
“If they had been able to turn two draws into wins then they would have been promoted. They lost the league by four points and at one point they were five points clear. It’s just making subtle changes.
“We’re not going to rip up the rulebook. You’re not going to see someone trying to play like Manchester City in the Isthmian Premier League – it’s not right and I’m not stupid. But can we change and train with a slightly better intensity? Can we change a few bits off the pitch to make things a bit easier on it? We’ll do everything we can.”
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