Town boss Mick McCarthy says he wants striker Jack Marriott to be more than just an out and out goalscorer. Yesterday, the 19-year-old joined League Two Carlisle on loan for a month,
"Jack wants to play,” McCarthy said. "He loved his time out at Woking last year, just playing. Whether there’s 500 fans, 5,000 or 50,000 there, if they’re all singing your name because you’re the goalscorer, it’s a nice feeling. Well, I think it is, I never had it!”
Marriott scored 13 goals in 23 starts during two spells in the Conference with the Cards last season with a short stint at League One Gillingham, in which he appeared only once as a brief sub, sandwiched in between.
McCarthy believes the striker is up making the step up to League Two football: "He’s capable of playing at that level and if he gets chances, he’ll score.
"We tell him that you can’t just be a goalscorer. I’ll explain that. David McGoldrick didn’t score for 11 games last year but I never considered leaving him out because he did all the other stuff.
"He held it up, he ran in channels, he came back and defended, it stuck when it went up to him and he set things up for other players.
"He was an all-round player and it wasn’t just goals that he got. And he got back to scoring goals and he was terrific.
"So, that’s what we’re saying to Jack, be the goalscorer but look at Luis Suarez, he scored all the goals but didn’t he work and do everything else?
"There are other sides to it and he’s getting there, I think he’s done well. He didn’t play at Gillingham just because of circumstances with the team, but hopefully he’ll get games at Carlisle and he’ll score some goals.”
Could the initial spell be extended? "If he does well Kav [Carlisle boss Graham Kavanagh] will want to keep him.
"If he does well and we’re not doing well and we haven’t scored goals, I’ll probably want to bring him back. But let’s see what the month brings. There’s no agenda, no plan on that at all.”