Gab Sutton Weekly: My quarterly verdict on League Two

Following on from last week's piece looking at three League One clubs that have made him eat humble pie, EFL pundit Gab Sutton turns his attention to League Two and how the season in the fourth tier is shaping up for this latest edition of his weekly column.

After the first quarter of the campaign, it’s time to pencil in the lines of the division, and group up the teams. There’s plenty of time for those groups to change, of course, but a rough pattern for the season seems to be in place.

Four groups emerging

I think the current top four – Walsall, Swindon, MK Dons and Grimsby - have been the best four teams in the division so far by a reasonable margin.

Other than Chesterfield, who I’d probably put closer to the former group, there’s a narrow gap in quality between 5th and 16th, bookended by Gillingham and Bristol Rovers respectively, as the five-point difference suggests.

There are three lower to middling sides in Barrow, Tranmere, Oldham and Harrogate, all of whom I think will be somewhere between 14th and 21st, and then there’s the bottom five, which I expect to be pretty similar come the end of the season.

I expect plenty of movement within those four groups, but not very much between them.

Plenty in the promotion hunt

For instance, I only think three of Walsall, Swindon, MK Dons, Grimsby and Chesterfield can win automatic promotion; of their fellow top seven inhabitants, Salford have too low a floor, and Gillingham, too low a ceiling.

In terms of the Play-Offs, I don’t think Notts County, Cambridge, Fleetwood or Crewe are going to create enough chances to crack the top seven in the end, while Bromley rely heavily on set pieces – they’re brilliant at that, but I’d worry that if teams learn to deal with that aspect they might not have enough to fall back on.

So, the teams outside the Play-Offs that are likeliest to make it, I think, are Barnet and Colchester.

The Bees had a slow start with three straight defeats, integrating lots of new signings, more than expected, but the returns of Nik Tavares, Callum Stead and Lee Ndlovu, combined with the resurgence of Antony Hartigan, means they’re starting to look more like the force that stormed to the National League title last season with 102 points.

Colchester, on the other hand, have a prodigious talent up top in Micah Mbick on loan from Charlton, and having been a bit wasteful earlier in the campaign, they’re now finding that more clinical edge with three straight wins for the U’s.

Exiles and Salop could drop

In terms of the bottom two, I think it could be Newport and Shrewsbury that go. The Welsh club's board released a statement giving current manager David Hughes and his staff a vote of confidence in light of their poor start to the season.

I think Cheltenham will resurge under Steve Cotterill, as they’ve already started to, Crawley have played better so far than results suggest, and Accrington Stanley have an unyielding capacity to stun from time to time – they’ve beaten MK Dons and Swindon.

Conversely, there are a few too many concerning sides around the other pair to back them for safety with much confidence.

But thankfully for them, there’s still plenty of time for things to change!