Millwall let prolific striker slip through their fingers - he racked up £16m in transfer fees | OneFootball

Lewis Grabban is one of the top scorers in EFL history, but it didn't click for him early on at Millwall

With over 150 goals across the Championship, League One, and League Two, Lewis Grabban will go down as one of the better strikers the divisions has ever seen.

But ultimately, whilst that may be the general consensus, it all does depend on which fans you ask.

Grabban played for 11 different clubs in England, ranging from League Two at Rotherham United to even the Premier League for the likes of Norwich City and Bournemouth. Therefore, the frontman has built up the transfer fees across his entire career over time.

The key standout fees came in the form of a £3 million fee when he joined Norwich City from Bournemouth, £7 million when the Cherries re-signed him two-and-a-half years later, and £6 million following his move from the Vitality Stadium to Nottingham Forest in 2018.

Grabban enjoyed productive seasons at all three of those clubs (although his best days at Bournemouth came during his first stint), and was definitely worth the money for both Norwich and Forest, at least.

But at Millwall, when the striker was coming through the ranks in his early 20s, he couldn't seem to hit the target as often as he would become known to do.

Lewis Grabban couldn't hit the ground running at Millwall

Millwall spent just £150,000 to bring a then-20-year-old Grabban to The Den in 2008. Grabban had played just 23 minutes of Championship football for the Eagles in the first half of that season, and spent a period on loan at Motherwell, too.

A young, raw talent, then-manager Kenny Jackett would have hoped that a drop-down to League One could help boost his output, but Grabban scored just three times in 13 third-tier games, which included 10 starts, and didn't make the team in seven of the last nine games.

Despite this, Jackett still persisted with Grabban to begin the 2008/09 season, and the frontman repaid his faith with three goals in the opening five league games, followed by another three in nine as Millwall ended October inside the top two.

Those six were the only league goals Grabban scored that campaign, however, and by the end of the season, he was once again in and out of the squad, starting just one of the final four and playing just 26 minutes across both legs of their play-off semi-final win over Leeds United.

Grabban did, in fact, start in the play-off final, playing just over an hour as Millwall fell to Scunthorpe United, losing 3-2. The Lions would find success in the play-offs the season after, but Grabban had little to do with it, playing just 11 times in the league and failing to make the squad for both the semi-final's second leg and the final.

He would be loaned to Brentford at the beginning of the 2010/11 season, which turned into a free transfer in January 2011.

Millwall were left scratching their heads as Lewis Grabban became a solid EFL striker

League One was still too tall a task for Grabban, who found himself moving to then-League Two side Rotherham in the 2011/12 season. It was then that he established himself as a consistent 10-goal-a-season threat.

That sole season in South Yorkshire set his career in motion, as he went four seasons scoring at least 12 league goals, including 22 for Bournemouth in the 2013/14 campaign which prompted the first big-money signing of his career by Norwich.

His career stalled a little in the Premier League, but by that time, he'd already amassed £10 million in transfer fees. Millwall would have been left a little confused not only at the fact he was frequently getting seven-figure bids for him, but that he was playing in the Premier League at all.

Then, after a few successful loan spells at Sunderland and Aston Villa during the 2017/18 campaign, where he scored a combined 21 league goals, his £6 million move to Forest not only bumped up his total fees, but also continued to see him be a lethal goalscorer in the division.

Grabban retired having scored 11 goals in 70 games for Millwall. Only at Crystal Palace did he have a worse goal per game ratio, but there he only played 13 times.

Millwall will always be left frustrated that he wasn't able to thrive at The Den, and even more soured by the fact they weren't able to receive such a healthy profit for his services.