Elgin City chairman Graham Tatters insists League 2 will be just as competitive despite the promotion of Peterhead and Clyde.
The Blue Toon and Bully Wee will be playing in League 1 in August but Tatters believes the arrival of Highland League champions Cove Rangers, Stenhousemuir and Brechin City will ensure the division is just as challenging as ever.
He said: “Cove Rangers are coming in and they seem to have lot more spending power than we do, but that’s life in Elgin, as opposed to Aberdeenshire.
“Brechin City are now also in League 2 for next season after being relegated last term.
“They’ll probably put together a brand-new squad, and Stenhousemuir will also regroup after their relegation from League 1.
“I think that Cove coming in will be interesting.
“They’ve had two or three good seasons in the Highland League, but even when we were in the Highland League, Alan McRae was desperate to get them into the league ever since.
“It’s a pity that we’ve lost Berwick as they are really nice people, and it’s sad to lose a team, full stop.
“They were just trying to keep their club together, just like us, as we don’t have a sugar daddy to help us out either.
“Peterhead will be a loss because they are good people as well, characters such as chairman Rodger Morrison, and directors Ian Grant and Harry Fraser, all nice people.
“Peterhead were a quality team last season, they really shouldn’t have been in our league.
“With the quality of players they had they should have been out of League 2 a long time ago.”
City will try to be creative in overcoming their geographical disadvantage as a part-time club while their boss will be expected to nurture young talent.
Tatters said: “We’ve given the manager a budget and we’ve had some trialists up for pre-season.
“We train in Elgin on a Tuesday and Thursday evening but once a month we will all train together in Aviemore, and bring the west coast-based players up for that.
“We have reduced their numbers and we now have a higher density of players who are north-east-based who train together.
“Our goalkeeper Thomas McHale, who was on-loan at Weymouth last season and helped them win their league after we sent him down there in January, is now back with ourselves for the last year of his contract.
“Out of 16 players we have at the moment 12 are signed and 24 are training but we will whittle that down. What we are really wary of is what happened last season when we lost them after playing in the Betfred Cup as they weren’t good enough. We made that mistake two years on the trot but to avoid that we’ve signed five of our younger lads who will come in to augment that squad.”