PETERBOROUGH UNITED chairman Darragh MacAnthony has lifted the lid on his feelings for Wrexham Football Club.

McAnthony says he’s not envious of Wrexham’s situation where Hollywood actors Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds have bankrolled what could be back-to-back promotions for the Reds but he’s sick of the amount of publicity the North Wales club gets.

Speaking to TalkSport’s Jim White, MacAnthony said: “There’s two things that you always have in life and that’s jealously and envy and they can be mistook for each other.

“I hate jealousy, it’s an evil thing but I don’t mind being envious of someone else or people being envious of me – envy is healthy, we all want what other people want.

“I think people look at them and there’s a lot of jealousy.

“I’m very rarely envious of other people at this stage in life because I’ve had a lot of things that other people have had.

“When I was growing up in Marbella, Spain, I’d look around at all of the cars and boats and money and be envious, but I’ve had plenty of that and I’m fortunate."

“If I wanted to be a Hollywood star I would be,” he joked. “I decided I wanted to sell houses and make a bit of money. It takes longer being an actor. As I say to my kids, I was actually a good actor in school!

“Fair play to them, they bought in and came up with a project and they’ve managed to finance this project by selling documentaries, advertising and doing deals with skincare companies, drink companies where they’ve had to put very little of their own dough in.

“Anyone who comes in and has a couple of promotions and increases and grows their crowd – I saw their revenues the other day and it was £15-£20million a year now as opposed to £5million when they first came in.

“Anyone who does that is a successful person at what they do. They put some decent people in – I watched the Wrexham documentary and it was quite good, the first season and a half then peters out like a lot of sports documentaries do.

“The only thing that irritates me about the whole Wrexham thing isn’t Wrexham themselves – I have a lot of admiration for Wrexham, the owners, the people behind the scenes – it’s the media.

“You open a newspaper and there’s stuff about the Championship, League One and League Two, but every week there’s stuff about Wrexham and it’s nauseating.

“You get why they’re doing it because they want an American audience but at the end of the day there are 72 EFL clubs out there.

“They need to calm down thinking they’re bigger than Leeds or whoever.”

MacAnthony, whose manager at London Road is former Wrexham captain Darren Ferguson, has also tipped Wrexham to reach the Championship.

“I said to my wife when this started that they’ll be in the Championship in four years’ time and she said, ‘never going to happen’,” he added.

“I said ‘trust me, they’ll be in the Championship and we’ll probably be in League One’ because they can pay £7,000, £8,000, £9,000, £10,000 a week to players and we can’t. That’s the dynamic of the game.

“By the way, I respect anybody who comes in and spends very little of their own money, turns a project into a lot more money and makes them worth a lot more money because if they sold Wrexham tomorrow, they’d make a hefty profit.”

MacAnthony and Ferguson were celebrating at Wembley on Sunday as Posh lifted the EFL Trophy with a 2-1 win over Wycombe.

Ferguson, who lifted the trophy with Wrexham as a player in 2005, also led Posh to glory 10 years ago in the same competition.

“I’m also delighted for the fans because last time we were here was 10 years ago,” said Ferguson (pictured above).

“We might not get here for another decade, so when you get the opportunity you’ve got to make the most of it.”