All 24 EFL Championship clubs ranked by how bad their defending is | OneFootball

To build a successful team, not conceding goals is as important as scoring them, so here's a ranking of all 24 Championship clubs by goals conceded.

In football, preventing opposing teams is as important as the number that your team scores, so here are all 24 Championship clubs ranked by how few they've conceded this season.

Success in modern football can be defined by hitting a sweet spot. On the one hand, a successful team has to be strong in front of goal. But defensive solidity is just as important. It doesn't matter how many goals your team scores if your opponents manage to get one more than yours.

With that in mind, and with everybody now having played 18 games, let's take a look at the current Championship table, ranked by how many goals teams have conceded.

It looks like it's going to be an exceptionally tight season in this division, and fine margins will likely be extremely important by the time we get to the business end of the season.

Where teams are tied on the number of goals conceded, we've separated them by their actual goal difference.

It comes as no surprise to see Sheffield Wednesday at the bottom of the pile for this list. The club were severely hamstrung by transfer embargoes during the summer, leaving manager Henrik Pedersen with a threadbare squad, and they haven't been helped by serious injuries to key players. Highly-rated goalkeeper Pierce Charles, for example, hasn't played since the middle of August. The arrival of highly-experienced free agent Liam Cooper may help, in that respect.

23 ? ? Hull City - 30

The Tigers are currently in 8th place in the actual Championship table at the moment, but are second from bottom in this one. But there haven't been any exceptionally heavy defeats in their 18 games so far. They've only lost by more than two goals once, and that came with a 3-0 home loss to Bristol City in August. They're also the second-highest scorers in the division, so they could be categorised as the division's entertainers so far.

Norwich City have had a calamitous start to the 2025-26 season, and despite a 3-1 win against Queens Park Rangers in their last game they're still in serious trouble near the foot of the table. They've only kept one clean sheet so far this season, and that came with a 2-0 win at Blackburn at the end of August. If the Canaries are to survive relegation to League One at the end of this season, sorting that leaky defence out is one of new head coach Philippe Clement's most urgent priorities.

Were it not for a horrendous 7-1 defeat at Coventry at the end of August and a 4-1 home defeat at the hands of Ipswich Town, Queens Park Rangers would be joint-second in this table. To Rangers' credit, they bounced back impressively from the Coventry defeat, going unbeaten for their next six matches, winning four and drawing two. But losing 3-1 to a Norwich team that had previously only scored 16 goals all season was a worrying sign that their defensive issues might not be completely solved just yet.

Three straight wins have finally lifted the Blades out of the relegation places at the bottom of the table, following a disastrous start which saw the two Sheffield clubs occupy the division's bottom places for several weeks. It took Sheffield United until the 8th November to get to their third clean sheet of the season, but they managed it in their next two games following that as well, indicating that a corner is being turned at Bramall Lane.

19 ? ? Swansea City - 27

Another club to have already spun the managerial roulette wheel this season, Swansea City have now replaced Alan Sheehan with Vitor Matos, but it's now been eight games since the Swans last kept a clean sheet in the League, all of which hints at the scale of the job facing the new manager if he's to arrest their slide towards the relegation places.

Portsmouth currently occupy the third relegation place in the Championship, with a run of one win in eight matches having dropped them from 14th to 22nd place in the table. Their big issue has been scoring goals, but the Pompey defence hasn't exactly been tight, either, and this is all the more surprising, considering that they only conceded three goals in their first five games of the season.

17 ? ? Oxford United - 25

A surprise 2-1 win against Ipswich Town on Friday night which took them out of the relegation places lifted a little of the pressure on the Oxford United manager Gary Rowett, whose team had failed to win any of their previous five matches. Oxford have only kept two clean sheets in their first 18 matches, and the last one of those came on the 18th October with a 1-0 win against Derby County, and there's still only a point between them and the relegation places. But this season was always likely to be a struggle for Oxford, and they're just about holding their own at the moment.

16 ? ? Millwall - 25

There are four teams tied on 25 goals conceded, and Millwall are at the bottom of that list. They're in the unusual position of being in third place in the table with a negative goal difference. Only two of their League wins so far have been by a greater margin than one, while they've lost three games by a margin of three goals or more, with two of those coming at home.

Millwall's biggest problem last season was scoring goals - they managed just 47 League goals, despite finishing 8th in the table - and it feels likely that this could be an issue for them this season, too. If things remain as tight as they have been, goal difference could be all-important by the end of the season, and the Lions could do with a boost to theirs.

15 ? ? Derby County - 25

Derby County are another team whose goals against tally would be looking a lot healthier were it not for Coventry City. The Sky Blues won their meeting in August 5-3 at Pride Park. This was the Rams' second match of the season, and it was their second two-goal defeat of the season, too. But they haven't lost a game by more than a single-goal margin since, though they haven't kept a clean sheet in any of their last six games. They're one of two clubs - alongside Hull City - to have scored the same number of goals as they've conceded.