What will Maison bring to Chester?

You really have to feel sorry for the supporters of Chester City. The club goes from one crisis to another and now they have the surprising appointment of Morell Maison as director of football which was announced last Saturday.

No wonder manager Jimmy Harvey wants out (see earlier article). There may not be much money at Kidderminster but the club appears to be run by honourable people.

"It is not a takeover at this moment in time, it is me coming in as director of football," Maison told the Liverpool Post.

"I am here to bring my experience in to help the club. We are trying to get everybody on side, that includes the staff and the supporters, we will give the manager (Jim Harvey) the tools he needs.

"I need to speak to the players and try and find a way forward. I am certainly not investing in the club, I have had bitter experience in the past.

"I shall be making recommendations and working on potential investment. There is a timetable for other investors to get involved."

If the new director of football isn't interested in investing in Chester why would anyone else?

So who is Morell Maison and why might he be suited to Chester? In the past he has spent time at Halesowen and before at Kettering.

According to the 200% site during Maison's time at Halesowen, 'the Yeltz were kicked out of the FA Cup and the FA Trophy by the Football Association, ran up horrifying debts, were boycotted by the club’s own supporters, had the West Midlands Police Economic Crime Unit investigating allegations of fraud at the club and ended up being released on bail by the police over the matter.'

Former Hereford United players Matt Clark and Rob Elmes were trying to run the club when a shareholders coup eventually ousted Maison. However the club had debts estimated at £250,000 when Maison left. It was placed into administration shortly afterwards.

Then on October 8th Maison was arrested by West Midlands Police.

"We can confirm that a 48-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of fraud as part of an ongoing investigation by officers at Halesowen Police Station," said the police. “He has been bailed pending further inquiries.”

It isn't known whether Maison's arrest had anything to do with the appearance in court a couple of months earlier of Guy Simpson, a former chief excutive of Halesowen. He was charged with evasion of customs duty after counterfeit cigarettes with a retail value of around £5.3m were imported into the UK.

Before Halesowen Maison was involved with Kettering. One of their unofficial websites, P.A.T.G.O.D. published an article about Maison last August. Maison was sacked from Kettering in April 2007.

The ongoing saga of Morrell Maison’s post Poppies career has been a quiet affair only briefly enlivened by football club take-overs, beating up players, touchline bans and ousting by supporter organisations.

And yet when he was here he seemed such a likeable chap, had time for everyone, and a ready smile.

Except that is for the two occasions I happened to catch his attention. He didn’t come across as such a nice guy then, I can tell you!

The first occasion was at a reserve team game at Rockingham Road. You remember reserve team games? They tended to be held on a Wednesday night when the main stand was opened up to a combination of old foggies, people desperate to wring the last penny of worth from their season tickets and sad bastards with absolutely nothing else going on in their lives. Er.. and me of course.

Anyway, the game was in full flow, and although he wasn’t directly in control of team affairs Morrell strolled around the technical area with a cup of tea in hand, offering the odd word of instruction. Suddenly there was a comically poor decision given against one of our players. It was such a laughable bad decision I let out a surprised and inadvertent snort or derisive laughter. It appears I was the only person in the small crowd to find this passage of play so funny, and I let this noise escape me at the exact moment the ground fell into almost perfect silence. My exclamation carried across the ground quite audibly.

Certainly I seemed to find this incident funnier than Morrell did. I don’t know whether he thought I was laughing at his player, or didn’t like the sound of a fat bloke chortling loudly, but he gave me a stare of pure venom. It was a real Samuel L Jackson, bad-mother-f**ker look. I spent the rest of the game trying to avoid eye contact with our Manager and, more importantly, desperately trying to not find anything else on the pitch amusing – not as easy as it sound given that Darren Caskey was playing.

I put this down as a one-off until an away game at Worksop. This was the game where Anthony Elding received his 15th Poppies red card in only his 12th game for us and we slithered to a defeat, which pretty much ruled us out of play-off contention.

The team had indulged in a post match, halfway line huddle during which some of our supporters let them know how disappointed they were at the abject lack of effort, skill, and passion on display with various pithy phrases. As we continued to morosely file out of the ground, a curious feature of Worksop’s ground became worryingly apparent. In leaving the pitch the players walked straight across our path and into the dressing room. This served to quieten the mutterings amongst our brave terrace warriors. The players were mostly big buggers, and even if they couldn’t hit a barn door with a banjo there was no guarantee they couldn’t hit a double chin with their fists.

At this point one of our more forthright fans known only as Rover couldn’t resist making a final critique of the day’s events. Unfortunately for me, Rover, at barely 5 and half foot tall, was to my rear. Consequently when Morrell’s head snapped in the direction of this latest comment he locked eyes directly onto mine. “Thanks Rover!” Instantly Morrell started answering back and heading in my direction, I guess not to thank me for making the effort to get to Worksop that day. Thankfully Nathan Koo Boothe, in almost certainly his only decent challenge in a Poppies shirt, held back his irate boss and the players smuggled the snarling Morrell down the tunnel.

Twice I had come into the Manager’s line of vision and both times saw his ugly side. I wouldn’t have minded so much if I had given him cause on either occasion, but I was an innocent bystander both times. Given the way some fans shriek at our Managers week in week out to no effect I don’t know whether I should be disheartened or proud of my record!

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