Doncaster Rovers: Alex Kiwomya '˜needs to bring out his own potential'

Currently in the third month of a loan spell with Chesterfield, Kiwomya appears to have finally found his feet with the National League side, having netted three goals in his last two games and earned rave reviews for his recent performances.

The 22-year-old's career looked to have stagnated in the aftermath of a debilitating bout of the auto-immune disease Guillain-Barre which blighted his first season at Rovers.

And McCann has encouraged him to recognise his own potential and convert that into performances on the pitch.

'It has been a difficult 18 months for Alex,' McCann told the Free Press.

'His illness came for him when I wasn't at the club but when I first came he'd started pre-season really brightly, he was involved in the first three or four games, started the second game here at home against Wycombe.

'There's definitely real potential in Alex. Now he just needs to bring it out of himself.

'As a football player you can't always just look at your manager and think my face doesn't fit or anything like that.

'You've got to realise it yourself and do it yourself.

'There's a lot of fingerpointing in football. I think as a football player you've got to sometimes look in the mirror and ask yourself where am I, what have I got to do to get back to where I think I should be?

'Fair play to Alex, he's doing it.'

McCann believes the spell with Chesterfield will have been a wake-up call for the striker, as well as Rovers team mate Alfie Beestin who joined the Spireites last week.

And he says they can match the path back to being an EFL regular taken by new Rovers signing Kieran Sadlier, who had two years in the League of Ireland after leaving Peterborough United.

He said: 'I'm sure Alex doesn't want to play at that level, or Alfie Beestin.

'What they're doing is they're doing it the Kieran Sadlier way, the hard way, and make sure people start to see what they're about and start working their way back up.

'Whether that's with Doncaster or someone else, we'll have to wait and see.'