New Maidstone United striker Aaron Blair says he was shown a lack of respect by former club Braintree after helping them win promotion

Summer signing Aaron Blair is happy to be at Maidstone after claiming he was shown a lack of respect by his former club.

Player-of-the-year Blair scored 16 goals as unfancied Braintree won the National League South play-offs last season, including a stunning strike in their 4-3 final win at Worthing.

But he walked away from the chance to play National League football after a ‘disrespectful’ contract offer as the Iron moved from part-time to full-time football.

The former Dagenham man is back at Step 2 with Maidstone this season where manager George Elokobi’s words during transfer talks were music to his ears.

“I base a lot of my values on respect and I just don’t think Braintree reciprocated that back to me,” said Blair.

“But when I spoke to George he said his top three things he follows were respect, integrity and honesty, and as soon as he said that to me, I thought, ‘Yeah, that’s me all over’.

“That’s what really sold it to me.

“Playing in the National League would have been perfect but I didn’t really want to downgrade myself after the disrespect.

“The whole contract thing was a mess. They were going full-time but my contract extension was part-time.

“I think they offered me £50 more to go full-time and because I didn’t accept that they said I could stay on what I was on and play with the youth team.

“I was thinking after all that’s gone on in the season, and what I’ve done, it’s just been thrown out the window.

“I wanted a bit of respect and they didn’t show that to me.

“If they’d met in the middle, fair enough, I could take that, but they didn’t even do that.

“Surely there’s a bit of respect between us? I haven’t shown them any disrespect since I was there. I was professional when I was there at all times.

“When I