Leeds United striker Mallik Wilks is unlikely to play for the club ever again, according to Grant McCann.
The Doncaster Rovers manager made the shock claim over the United academy product, who is on a half-season loan at the League One club.
Wilks has made a big impact for Rovers, scoring his fourth goal in 10 matches for the club on Wednesday night in their 4-1 away win at Walsall.
“My personal opinion is he will not ever get a chance at Leeds,” McCann told the Yorkshire Post. “I think that they will strengthen again in January and they are strong up there (in attack), with the boy Tyler Roberts. It is going to be difficult for Mallik.
“Him and his agent need to decide whether he wants to stay at Leeds and extend his contract or Mallik wants to go and sample the Football League.
“He loves it here. If it was my decision, I would sign him today as he has huge potential in him. But if he keeps going in the way he is, there are going to be clubs sniffing around him.”
OPINION
McCann is not so much using the carrot in a bid to persuade Wilks to spurn his boyhood club to sign permanently for Doncaster, as grabbing a sledgehammer to demonstrate why he will never make it at Leeds. Given the 19-year-old’s eye for goal that has already reaped dividends in the Football League – Wilks scored five times in 24 games while on loan at Accrington last season – it is fairly extraordinary to demolish the youngster’s chances of ever playing for Leeds again. The teenager played just a single match under Garry Monk in January 2017, but is young enough and good enough to make it, despite the progress made by the likes of Jack Clarke and Ryan Edmondson, not to mention more senior man Tyler Roberts, who scored his first two goals for the club in midweek. There is no reason why Wilks could not jump above Clarke and Edmondson, who have just a single senior appearance for Leeds between them.