Former Cardiff City manager Steve Morison will spend this weekend planning for next season – as the new boss of non-League Hornchurch.

Morison – who was sacked by the Bluebirds back in September – has surprised many by agreeing to drop down to the seventh tier of English football.

Horchurch FC play in the Isthmian League Premier Division, but Morison insists it’s a decent career move for a young manager who still needs to add to his experience of management.

The 39-year-old made the leap from Cardiff U23s manager to first team boss and seemed to be making a reasonable success of it until he was surprisingly sacked by Cardiff owner Vincent Tan just a few weeks into last season.

“I’ve had a tough eight months out of the game,” said Morison, who spent some of his playing career in non-league football.

“I have been away on holiday, come back and everything just feels right. It’s where I need to be in my current head space.

“It’s right where I started my journey as a football player. I feel like I want to be part of this football club making its journey up the leagues.

“I went to Cardiff Under-23s and then through the good work I did with the Under-23s I got an opportunity to help the first team stay in the Championship, which I managed to do in my first season.

“Obviously, I got the gig full-time and unfortunately only lasted 10 games after a big summer rebuild, so it was a frustrating one. But it is what it is, I can’t worry about it now.

“I’ve learned a lot about myself. I’m really pleased to be here.”

Hornchurch chairman Alex Sharp has claimed the appointment of Morison came after Cardiff had initially held talks with their former manager about the possibility of returning to his old job.

Cardiff eventually appointed Turkish manager Erol Bulut to take over from Mark Hudson and Sabri Lamouchi, who did not last long in following Morison.

“I had a number of conversations with Steve,” Hornchurch chairman Alex Sharp told the east London club’s YouTube channel.

“He and I were then out of the country at different times and obviously, as a board, we reviewed all the applicants we had.

“To add complication to it, Steve was still involved in the Cardiff manager situation and was in active conversations to go back.

“Then, we had the final conversation when he said, ‘Yeah, I’m really up for it, I really like this’.

“If we felt, as a board, he was doing this as a six-month gig to try and get back into the Football League, we wouldn’t have made the decision.

“But you’ll see that’s not his intention at all. He is prepared to sign a decent contract with us and I think we will benefit significantly from having him at the club.”