Over the last 22 years, the Championship has seen numerous outstanding strikers, but who is the undisputed ‘best of the best’?
From frontmen who made a huge impression in a few years to those whose stay in the second tier lasted over a decade and saw them score over 100 goals, there have been plenty of number nines who have had some of their best years in the level.
Picking the ten greatest frontmen in Championship history is a hotly debated topic, but we at Football League World have taken on the responsibility of compiling our own list.
Here are the top 10 Championship strikers of all time.
10Chris Martin
We begin the list with one of the seven members of the 100 club who have scored Championship goals as of writing.
Chris Martin is one of the division’s most prolific appearance makers, so it’s no surprise that he stands near the top of the all-time scoring lists, having scored 114 goals in a career that saw him play for eight different second-tier clubs.
He led the line in promotion pushes for the most of those clubs, finishing second with Norwich City in 2009/10 and reaching the play-offs many times with Derby County and Fulham.
His finest years at Pride Park saw him score 20, 18, and 15 times in consecutive seasons from 2013 to 2016, although he still contributed three more double-digit scoring performances between then and his final year in the league in 2022/23, putting him near the bottom of the top ten.
9Troy Deeney
There may not be a more legendary Championship goal than Troy Deeney’s last-minute winner in Watford’s play-off semi-final against Leicester City in 2013.
That marked the end of the first of three seasons in the second tier, where the frontman dominated the division, scoring 24 the following year and 21 the year after that to ultimately return the Hornets to the Premier League after an eight-year absence.
Deeney spent the majority of his subsequent career in the Premier League, although he still scored seven goals in 19 games in Watford’s solitary return to the league in 2020/21. He wasn’t able to maintain that level of scoring at Birmingham City in his latter years, but that didn’t take away from his great second-tier career.
95 goals are enough to maintain him among the Championship’s top ten all-time goal scorers for the time being, and it’s more than enough to secure a spot on this list.
8David Nugent
From the moment 19-year-old David Nugent joined Preston North End from Bury in January 2005, Championship fans knew they were watching someone with Premier League and international talent.
After 33 goals in two and a half seasons, he earned a top-flight move to Portsmouth, and his only England cap followed shortly after. It wasn’t until he returned to the second tier with Pompey in 2010 that he really started to establish himself as one of the division’s greatest strikers.
That 2010/11 season marked the first of four consecutive double-digit scoring seasons for Leicester, culminating with a 20-goal season on the way to the title in 2014. Two seasons later, he was promoted again with Middlesbrough.
Only two guys have scored more than Nugent in the second division. The 41-year-old falls down the rankings due to the rate at which they and others score goals, but he still holds a respectable top-10 spot.
7Teemu Pukki
Teemu Pukki’s stay in the Championship was brief, only three seasons, but he had a significant impact while at Norwich.
During his tenure in the second division, the Finnish forward averaged more than one goal every other game, despite only scoring 10 goals in 41 games in his final season before heading to Minnesota United.
Indeed, the 29 goals he scored in his debut season at Carrow Road in 2018/19 earned him the Golden Boot and the Championship title, bringing Norwich back into the Premier League after a three-year hiatus, and he followed that up with 26 goals two years later.
Two titles and two 25-goal seasons are nothing to sneeze at, and if his career in the division had lasted as long as some of the others on this list, he’d be much higher up the goalscoring statistics, for sure.
6Sylvan Ebanks-Blake
Sylvan Ebanks-Blake, the first man to win two Championship Golden Boots and, as of writing, the only player to win them in consecutive seasons, deserves to be included on this list.
The former Wolves forward completed five full seasons in the second division, scoring double-digit goals in all but one of them, a nine-game stint with Ipswich Town in 2013/14.
Whether it was at Molineux or Plymouth Argyle, where his goalscoring reputation was established, you knew what you were getting with Ebanks-Blake.
In the 2008/09 season, he won a second-tier winner’s medal, was named Player of the Season, and scored the Goal of the Year.
5Ross McCormack
Ross McCormack was such a dangerous forward in the second division that he was bought twice for seven-figure sums by former Premier League clubs looking to return to the top flight.
Fulham paid £11 million for the Scotsman in 2014, and Aston Villa paid £12 million two years later, albeit the latter is best kept quiet.
That dry time at Villa Park near the conclusion of his career can be easily overlooked, given that it followed three successive 20-goal seasons in the second division with three different clubs: Cardiff City, Leeds United, and Fulham.
The 28 goals he scored at Elland Road during the 2013/14 season earned him the Golden Boot, and his other goals put him fourth in the division’s all-time scoring lists, with 120.
An terrific second-tier frontman—it’s a credit to the list’s overall strength that he only just makes the top five.
4Jordan Rhodes
Jorda Rhodes is the second highest scorer in Championship history. However, he is ranked fourth in this top ten ranking.
While at Blackburn Rovers, the 36-year-old had perhaps the best offensive season of anyone in the division, scoring 26, 25, and 21 goals in consecutive seasons.
Unfortunately, he was unable to repeat that magic in the top flight. He joined Middlesbrough during their promotion drive in 2016, although despite being promoted, he was unable to break into the Premier League squad.
Back in the second tier with Sheffield Wednesday, Norwich, and Huddersfield Town, where he broke through in League One, he continued to score key goals, bringing his total to a very outstanding 123.
3Lewis Grabban
Lewis Grabban exemplified the ‘great in the Championship, possibly not ready to make the Premier League step-up’ sort of player that so many top second-tier talents are labelled with.
Grabban only made 24 top-flight matches in his career, which was a shame given that he demonstrated Premier League abilities on multiple occasions in the Championship for various clubs.
His 22-goal performance for Bournemouth in 2013/14 stands out, but he also scored 12 goals for Norwich to help them gain promotion the following year.
Back at Bournemouth, he was loaned out to Reading, where he helped them reach the play-off final, Sunderland, where he scored 12 goals in 19 games for a struggling club, and finally Aston Villa, where he scored eight goals in 18 games to help them earn promotion.
And that’s before his repeated double-digit campaigns at Nottingham Forest, which resulted in promotion in 2022.
The 38-year-old was as certain as he could be in front of goal. He has played the fewest games of any striker in the top 100 clubs, by at least 98, and is thus well-deserving of a podium finish.
2Aleksandar Mitrovic
Aleksandar Mitrovic was fearsome in front of goal for Fulham in the Championship, winning two Golden Boots in as many promotion-winning campaigns, including 43 in 44 appearances during the 2021/22 season – a record that may never be broken.
He boasts the best minutes-to-goal ratio in the division’s history, scoring 85 goals in just 126 games, which is enough to keep him in the top 15 on the all-time scoring list as of writing.
He may have played the fewest games in the Championship of anyone on this list, but pound for pound, he’s one of the best to ever do it in the division.
Arguably, the guy at the top of the list is relieved that Mitrovic only spent three-and-a-half years in the division, since the Serbian’s scoring record would undoubtedly have been broken if his stint in the Championship had been extended a few years.
1Billy Sharp
Billy Sharp is widely considered as the EFL’s finest ever player, and while his Championship goals account for over half of his total tally across all four divisions, the 130 he has scored remains the record, which he smashed over four years ago.
The still-active 40-year-old’s spectacular goal-scoring bursts occurred more frequently in League One, with the 23 he scored in 2018/19 his only 20+ scoring season in the league, but this demonstrates how consistent he was in earlier seasons.
Sharp has scored 13 or more goals in a single Championship season six times, helping Sheffield United to two promotions in 2019 and 2023 and Southampton to one in 2012.
There is possibly no more revered frontman in EFL history than the Yorkshireman, who deserves to be ranked first on this list of the best strikers in the league’s history.
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