"He had a good season last season and I would say he will be good in this division; he will then have it to prove if we do get back into the Premiership, but Alan is building a side to get us out of the first division first and foremost," says Tony.
"It is another addition to the forward line which would give us Connolly and Defoe, obviously, who everyone thinks as the starting line up, and you have got Harewood and Deane as well and Richard Garcia and Neil Mellor.
"You do need competition and you do need a change sometimes as two little fellows doesn't always work.
"Marlon gives us something different - he is a pacy striker who has scored goals at this level as he has proved."
As for the overall situation, Tony adds:
"We are talking about five draws now and I think Alan would have swapped a couple of those for defeats and three of them for wins and that would have been nine points instead of five and we would have been right up there.
"But we have got a game in hand and that is important; we can't, as Alan has said, drift away and I still think that we are one of the teams capable of putting together about seven wins on the trot like Ipswich did.
"We really want to be up there with West Brom for an automatic spot; we have a squad that is good enough to do that and I think the boys in this division have to prove that they want to battle it out and then play the football that is going to win them games."
* Tony said here last week that his vote for best England player of the last 50 years goes to Bobby Moore.
UEFA are celebrating their 50th Jubilee next year and, as part of the celebrations, they are asking all 52 Member Associations to nominate one of its own footballers as its single most outstanding player of the past 50 years.
The player chosen must have played for the national team between 1954 and the present, and a glut of votes from the Bolton area has put Nat Lofthouse in with a good chance of winning the vote, the deadline for which has been extended to Friday at noon.
If you have other ideas than the good burghers of the north west, you may like to cast your vote at [email protected]