Gillingham’s hunt for top talent this summer has been hindered by the ever-widening gap between the Championship and League 1, says chairman Paul Scally.

He will be hoping the Gills can win promotion to the second tier of English football this season but described the financial gulf between the divisions as frightening.

Parachute payments from the Premier League mean those teams dropping into the Championship have big funds, leaving the likes of Gillingham to feed off the scraps.

Mr Scally said: “The problem is that the Championship is now like a mini-Premier League. I talked to one Championship manager this week and his wage bill is over £50m a year.

“When you consider our wage bill, at between £1.6-£1.8m mark, which is what a League 1 budget should be, the gap between League 1 and the Championship is frightening.

“As the money flows into the Championship, players’ salaries increase. Players don’t want to come down to League 1 and League 2 because they don’t think the salaries are that good.

“Salaries are very good in the real world but not as good as they would be in the Championship. That causes a problem and it is a constant battle we have. The worrying thing is that (the gap) is growing greater every year.”

Gillingham were battling for promotion for much of last season and winning a place in the Championship would change their financial planning drastically.

Mr Scally said: “Were we to have gone up last season, our wage bill would have probably gone up five or six fold and we still would have been in the bottom third of clubs, payroll wise, in that division.

“When you look at the clubs like Newcastle and Aston Villa, playing in the Championship, with additional parachute payments of 40-odd million, it is quite right that we talk about it not being a level playing field.

“That is why you need the right characters at the club, like Leicester showed last season.You can build a squad of characters that aren’t the highest paid but are together as a team and that is why Justin Edinburgh (the manager) does such a good job here.”