Plenty of time to close gap at top says Fleetwood ace Dempsey

Leaders Shrewsbury, the season’s surprise package, and second-placed Wigan have a cushion of seven and six points respectively over Charlton and Bradford in third and fourth.

Town have played one more game than the leading duo and are currently ninth, 11 points behind Wigan going into tomorrow’s home clash with Doncaster.

It is exactly a year ago that Town embarked on the 18-game unbeaten run that propelled them into the automatic promotion race.

Town lost out to Bolton for the second automatic promotion spot, then missed out to Bradford in a play-off competition won by Millwall.

Shrewsbury started this season with a mammoth 15-game unbeaten run, and Town’s Dempsey says it will be interesting to see how they react to their first league defeat against Peterborough three weeks ago.

Dempsey (below) believes the League One table will start to take shape at Christmas, with more teams set to start closing the gap at the top.

And he feels Town are one of them as they bid to bounce back from last Saturday’s 1-0 defeat at MK Dons when they host Rovers.

Dempsey said: “I think if you look at Shrewsbury, they went on an unbelievable run.

“It came to an end and it’s now just about seeing how they react and bounce back from that loss.

“I think Wigan are a great team. They have come down and have shown their class in our league.

“It is still too early to say that they are just going to coast it.

“I think that around Christmas time you will get an understanding of where the league is kind of about.”