Club figure reveals failed attempt to sign player from Derby County in the summer | OneFootball

Hull City’s head of recruitment Lee Darnbrough has confessed that the Tigers did attempt to sign Jack Marriott from Derby County in the summer before they missed out on the forward.

Marriott is a player that Grant McCann knows well, with the forward having played under the Hull City manager during his time in charge at Peterborough United in League One.

There were reports in the summer that the Tigers were potentially keen on making a move to sign Marriott from Derby.

That came with the striker far down the pecking order with the Rams and he was a player that they had made available for a transfer move as a result in the transfer window.

However, despite Hull’s interest, Marriott ended up making the move back to Peterborough for his second spell with the club.

hamstring injury that could keep him out for the next few months.

Speaking to BBC Radio Humberside, via Hull Live, Darnbrough revealed that Hull did make an attempt to sign Marriott in the summer before he joined Peterborough. Although he refused to be drawn on the details of the transfer attempt.

He said: “Yes, it’s difficult, but yes, we speak to a lot players, agents and representatives.

“There’s an association with Grant from a previous club, it’s trying to make everything come together that it suits.

“In that situation it might be that they’d built a house in the area and didn’t want to move, so you’re powerless to stop that if that’s what the player and their family want, then you have to respect it and move onto the next one.

“It’s a fact of life I’m afraid.”

He added: I can’t comment on specifics, I wouldn’t want to because he’s not a Hull City player but from that point of view, whether its relocation, whether they’ve got family commitments in the area, a young family, there’s lots of things that come to make a transfer happen.

“What we see in 90 minutes when they’re playing is one thing, everything else around it in terms of attracting a player, Ryan Longman for example – we tracked Ryan for two years since Jarrod (Bowen) was here, so that’s been a long courtship to get Ryan.”

The verdict

It was widely believed that Hull had tried to sign Marriott in the summer so this does not come as too much of a surprise.

However, it does perhaps shed a little more light on why the forward chose to turn down a move to the Tigers and re-sign with Peterborough instead in the transfer window.

Hull have struggled for goals at times this season and that is one of the main reasons why they are currently sat inside the relegation zone with just two wins from their opening 14 league matches.

Marriott is the sort of player that McCann could have potentially worked with to get more goals into his side. The forward is a player that has already proven that he can score goals in the Championship when he is fully fit and at his best.

However, Marriott’s fitness record was always going to make signing him a gamble for whoever won the race for his signature.

Peterborough have now seen that with him picking up an injury this term, so maybe Hull dodged a bullet in that sense.