Doncaster Rovers boss Grant McCann on why the lack of a 'Hollywood' factor in League Two in 2024-25 has made for a truer League Two promotion fight

Money talks. Other well-backed outfits in Stockport and Mansfield, if hardly to the same extent, were also automatically promoted alongside the Red Dragons.

Wrexham’s turnover last season was an astonishing £26.7m, very likely a record for a fourth-tier club in one individual campaign.

This time around, the battle for the top three, involving Doncaster Rovers and Bradford City among others, is much more competitive.

Just five points separate the top six and no-one would be foolhardy enough to predict the final standings on May 3.

Rovers boss Grant McCann, pictured, a respected authority on the EFL divisions despite hardly being described as a managerial ‘veteran’ at 44, reckons he knows why the margins at the top end are so slender this time around.

McCann, whose side welcome a direct promotion rival in AFC Wimbledon on Saturday - and face two others in Bradford and Notts County before season’s end - said: "It is very intense and the Championship is quite similar with three teams (fighting for two automatic spots).

"In League One, Birmingham have blown everyone away and they should do.

"It (League Two) is tight and that's what it’s all about. You talk about budgets and stuff in the division, but there’s not a lot in the teams in the budgets.

"There’s probably teams who spend a lot more than others like Carlisle and Gillingham and people like that. But with the rest of the division, there’s not much in it, hence why you see the tightness of the division.

"Obviously, when you go through the leagues and into League One and see the Birminghams, Wrexhams and Stockports, it is different then.

"What’s important at this level is recruitment. If you get the right people and characters to try and create a changing room which is together, you can be what you want to be.”

Given such a frenzied fight for three automatic promotion positions, which many observers expect to go down to the wire, the sense of achievement for those who manage to do so would be very high.

An added consideration as far as McCann is concerned is that any side who miss out would most likely be pitted in a play-off against a team full of late-season momentum.

A clutch of clubs just outside the top seven still retain hopes of gatecrashing the end-of-season lottery with a late-season charge, just as his own side did last term.

McCann, keen to take not just the conventional route via automatic promotion this time around, but see Rovers lift the title, added: "There are teams coming on strong as well behind the play-offs and teams who are down there thinking they have got a chance if they string four, five or six wins together of (even) the top three. I think that’s how exciting it is.

"Salford have a chance of reaching the top seven and that makes our game on Tuesday more interesting.”