Peterborough United’s Golden Boot winner felt he started the season as Ricky Miller’s stand-in, his joy at scoring against Northampton Town, Grant McCann’s managerial masterstroke and Marcus Maddison’s genius

Marriott, who moved to Derby for £4 million at the end of his sole season with Posh, told all to the club’s press officer Phil Adlam in one of his popular ‘lockdown interviews’ with former players.

On signing for Posh...

“I was close friends with Craig Mackail-Smith when we were together at Luton and made me aware Posh had an interest in me.

“I wasn’t playing as much as I would like at Luton in League Two and Posh were a team renowned for doing well with strikers so I really pushed for the move.

“It was the right time to progress my career and happily it happened.

“When I signed I felt Ricky Miller was the club’s number one striker because of the sheer number of goals he had scored in the National League, but he was banned from the first six matches so it gave me and Junior Morias our chance.

“I’d scored well in the final pre-season friendlies, but didn’t score in the opening two competitive games. I then scored my first goal at Bristol Rovers and went on to score a hat-trick so I was off and running.

“I scored two in my next game v Rotherham and then another one at Northampton. Scoring against Northampton in both games was spacial for me as I grew up there and one of my best mates would be watching with the Northampton fans.

“I wanted to score three goals a month which would be 30 for the season and I had six by the end of August.

“I then had 21 by the middle of January so I felt 30 was on. I kept getting texts from Craig warning me not to beat his best for a season and unfortunately I fell just short.

“I did have a spell when I didn’t score for four games and manager Grant McCann called me into his office and showed me a video of my best goals that season and I went out and scored in the next game at Blackpool.

“We did create a lot of chances and we had Marcus Maddison who could play the ball 40 yards and drop it at my feet or deliver the perfect cross. It looked like a long-ball tactic, but really it was just a seroes of exceptionally accurate long passes. I scored a lot of headers that season which was unusual for me which again was often down to the accuracy of Marcus.

“We had a good side. Players like Andrew Hughes and Liam Shephard were very underrated as was Anthony Grant at the heart of our midfield. We had good leaders at the back with Steve Taylor and Jack Baldwin, but we just fell short of our target.

“The end of the season and the following pre-season were strange for me as the club wouldn’t play me as they didn’t want me to get injured and ruin my chances of a move.

“Steve Evans pulled me before the start of the final game at Portsmouth and told me I wouldn’t be playing for that reason which was fair enough, but at half-time I felt I was going to lose the Golden Boot as my nearest challenger Brett Pitman scored two against us in the first-half. Another three goals and he would have caught me, but thankfully it didn’t happen.

“I played about 25 minutes of a pre-season friendly in Portugal when a local player kept trying to kick me out of the game. I didn’t play again!”

STAT ATTACK

Arrived: June, 2017.

Fee: £400k from Luton.

Apps: 56

Goals: 33

Left: July, 2018 to Derby for £4 million.