A football club director has told a court about the “strange relationship” between a former youth team coach at Crewe Alexandra and the teenage boy he is accused of abusing.

Lee Congerton, a former player who is now head of recruitment at Celtic, gave evidence in the trial of Paul McCann, who coached Crewe’s under-16s.

McCann, 57, is alleged to have groomed a teenage boy by showering him with gifts, taking him on football tours and letting him drink alcohol on holidays while he was underage. He is accused of committing a string of sexual assaults between 1987 and 1990, Chester crown court heard.

Congerton, 45, a former chief scout at Chelsea under José Mourinho, attended court on the third day of the trial. Giving evidence, he described how when he was a player with Crewe’s Crewe youth team he shared a room with McCann’s alleged victim.

The court previously heard McCann would regularly have young boys staying at his house in order to attend football matches and training. Congerton said he began staying at McCann’s house in Crewe and although he did not feel uncomfortable with McCann, he and other boys would joke about his relationship with the alleged victim.

He said: “It was quite a strange relationship. [The alleged victim] I believe was quite special to Paul, there was a different relationship. There was a particularly strange fondness. As I’ve got older it seems odd.”

He added: “There was too much affection from the adult towards the minor. It just wasn’t healthy for a man that age to be around young boys and show that affection.”

The court previously heard McCann kept bunkbeds at the house to accommodate the children. The alleged victim told police McCann would come into the room at night to abuse him on the top bunk while another boy lay in the lower bunk.

Congerton told the court he slept on the bottom bunk at McCann’s house one night when the alleged victim was on the top bunk and McCann came into their room.

He said: “I never remember Paul coming into the room on other occasions but I remember him hovering round on that occasion and being around in the room. I just drifted off and that was it. I remember lying on the bottom bunk and his legs, not adjacent but touching the bunk bed.”

He said he had not witnessed any sexual assaults by McCann.

Congerton, who joined Crewe in 1986 when he was 13, went on to describe his relief at leaving, saying it was not a “nice, healthy” environment for teenage boys.

He said: “I think Paul McCann was foolish and made himself vulnerable but I also feel that he enjoyed … I think he actually liked young boys to be around him and I think that’s what that football club was all about.”

Congerton, who has also coached for Liverpool and was sporting director for Sunderland before taking up a post at Celtic, said he stopped staying at the house of another coach, Barry Bennell, because he felt “uncomfortable”.

He said: “He used to try and fight you and things like that; that would never happen with McCann.”

In February Bennell was sentenced to 30 years in prison for committing hundreds of sexual offences against junior players from Manchester City and Crewe Alexandra.

McCann, of Great Sutton, Cheshire, denies six counts of indecent assault between 1987 and 1990.

He is alleged to have groomed his victim when his family were “down on their luck” and to have abused him at his home in Crewe, in a local squash club and while on holiday when the boy was aged between 15 and 17.