Stewart who has netted four times already this season believes there is a lot more to come.

"I have had a good pre-season after having a stop-start campaign last year," he said.

"I go into every game and try to perform to the best of my ability and although I have scored a few goals I feel there is room for improvement.

"I have confidence in my own ability and my team-mates', so I know that we can play better and hopefully get a few positive results in our next few games."

The Candystripes who defeated St Patrick's Athletic 3-0 on Tuesday night, thanks to goals from Stewart, Ciaran Martyn and Gareth McGlynn; host lowly Sligo Rovers this Friday night (KO 7.35pm), in a game, which will also be shown live on RTÉ-2 and Stewart knows it's going to be a difficult night.

"Although Sligo are down at the wrong end of the table, they still have a lot of quality players in their squad, so we'll need to play well if we want to win.

"There are quite a few ex-Derry players coming back to the Brandywell so we know that they will be up for it; however we can't worry about them and only concentrate on ourselves."

Last weekend Stephen Kenny's men drew 1-1 with unbeaten Galway United, with Stewart himself opening the scoring, before United full-back Seamus Conneely levelled things early in the second half.

However City had numerous opportunities to regain the lead, but Galway keeper Barry Ryan was in top form and denied them maximum points.

"We played very well against Galway and created a host of chances but unfortunately we didn't take them, which is something we need to improve on if we want to maintain our good form," admitted the ex-Linfield frontman.

"However we got a positive result at St Pat's on Tuesday and we want to carry that on against Sligo.

"We have a fantastic togetherness and team spirit, which we'll need all season if we want to challenge for honours.

"We showed that team-spirit recently to grind out wins against both Cork City and Shamrock Rovers, whenever we didn't play well we still never gave up and got two wins."