All 24 EFL Championship clubs' greatest ever player named | OneFootball

Each of the 24 Championship club has a long history to choose from, so here's FLW's ranking of the very best of all-time players from each club.

There's a lot of history in the EFL Championship, so Football League World have ranked the greatest player of all-time at each of its 24 clubs.

With some of them having been formed more than 150 years ago, there's a lot of history in the EFL Championship. Five of the clubs who made up the twelve originally invited to join the Football League in 1888 are members of the division, and the 24 clubs taking part this season have been involved in all levels of the game, from the Premier League down to the National League.

Judging the greatest of all-time is a highly subjective task. The first half-century of the professional game's growth was almost entirely unrecorded, and assessing players across different eras of the history of the game can be difficult, but Football League World have put together a list of one player for each of the 24 Championship clubs who holds a special place in the affections of their clubs' supporters.

Birmingham City - Trevor Francis

Trevor Francis was just 16 when he made his Birmingham City debut in 1970, and in February of the following year he scored all four goals for them in a 4-0 win against Bolton Wanderers at St Andrew's. He'd go on to make 280 appearances for the Blues over the next nine years, making his full England debut in 1977 against the Netherlands while playing for them.

And when the time came for him to move on, he set the club up very nicely in financial terms. His sale to Nottingham Forest made him the first £1 million British player in February 1979 (the actual transfer fee was £1.15 million, but a 15% League commission reduced that amount, with it later being claimed that the fee was set at £999,999 so that Francis wouldn't have the pressure of being the first million pound player), and just three months after his transfer he scored the winning goal for his new club in the European Cup final against Malmo.

Francis returned to St Andrew's as manager in 1996, where he was unable to get the team into the Premier League despite repeatedly finishing in the play-off spots. Despite taking them to the 2001 League Cup final, where they only lost on penalty kicks to Liverpool, he was sacked in October of the same year.

Blackburn Rovers - Alan Shearer

With 112 league goals in 138 appearances for Blackburn Rovers, including scoring more than 30 a season for them in the Premier League for three successive seasons, it was the signing of Alan Shearer from Southampton in 1992 which provided the catalyst for the Rovers' title-winning team of 1995.

It was a gamble. The £3.6 million that Rovers paid the Saints for Shearer was a UK transfer record at the time. But Blackburn more than recouped that cost by selling him to Newcastle for a world-record fee of £15 million in 1996. He may only have been with the club for four years, but his partnership with Chris Sutton brought success beyond the fans' wildest dreams.

Bristol City - John Atyeo

Some of the players in this list will have found their way onto it as a result of the number of games they played for their club, while others will be on account of the number of goals they scored for them. John Atyeo ticks both boxes for Bristol City.

Atyeo's career trajectory was a reflection of the fact that professional footballers couldn't make enough money from their playing careers to be able to retire, in the 1950s. Signing for the club from Portsmouth in 1951, he remained a semi-professional player for them until 1958 because he was training as a quantity surveyor. He returned to part-time status in 1963 as he trained to become a math teacher following his retirement from the game.

But his career statistics at Bristol City are sensational. He scored 314 goals for the Robins in 597 appearances for the club before retiring in 1966 and 15 years' service, and he also scored five goals in six appearances for the England national team in qualification for the 1958 World Cup finals. He's the last of four of the club's players to have played for England while with the club. There remains a statue of him outside Ashton Gate to this day.

Charlton Athletic - Derek Hales

Despite two spells with the club over a period of 12 years and being their record goalscorer with 168 goals, Charlton Athletic striker Derek Hales is best-remembered for being arguably the grumpiest footballer of all-time.

His 1979 player profile in an Addicks match programme has become legendary in its own right, while an on-field fight with teammate Mike Flanagan during an FA Cup match against non-league Maidstone United in the same year led to him being sacked, reinstated, and then for Flanagan to be sold to Crystal Palace.

Hales was a great goalscorer for Charlton over his two spells with the club and, as this interview with the Charlton Athletic Supporters Trust from 2025 makes clear, he remains as irascible a character as ever.

Coventry City - Cyrille Regis

Cyrille Regis had already made a wave by scoring the BBC's Goal of the Season for 1981-82 for his former club West Bromwich Albion when he signed for Coventry City for £250,000 in 1984, but the striker would go on to win the only medal of his playing career as part of the team which won the FA Cup in 1987.

He'd already won the first of the five caps that he'd get for England while playing at The Hawthorns. At the time of his first cap against Northern Ireland in February 1982, he was only the third Black player to be selected for England, after Viv Anderson and his West Brom teammate Laurie Cunningham.

Over seven years at Highfield Road, he ran up 61 goals in 282 appearances for the Sky Blues in all competitions, despite his team regularly struggling to avoid relegation from the First Division. His premature death at the age of 59 in January 2018 shocked the whole game.

Derby County - Steve Bloomer

Born in January 1874, Steve Bloomer is the oldest player on this list. Over two spells with Derby County, from 1891 to 1906 and from 1910 to 1914, he scored 332 goals for the club in 525 appearances, and by the end of his England career in 1907 he was the national team's record goalscorer too, although that record would only last for three years before being claimed by Vivian Woodward.

Upon his retirement from playing, he left England to coach in Germany, but unfortunately, he arrived there a month before Britain declared war on Germany, and consequently spent most of World War One in a Prisoner of War camp.

Upon his death in 1938, the Derby Evening Telegraph described him as "one of football's greatest personalities and the finest inside-right in the history of the game", and he's also been described as "the first superstar of English football." The Derby County club song, Steve Bloomer's Watching, which was written in 1997, is still played at Pride Park before every home match.

Hull City - Dean Windass

A local lad who had two spells with Hull City and scored arguably their most famous ever goal, Dean Windass made a career out of being a bit of a pantomime villain on the pitch. First signed by the club in 1991, he made 204 appearances for them and scored 64 goals before transferring to Aberdeen in 1995.

It would be more than a decade before he returned to the club, but when he did in 2007 (and at 39 years of age), he had a dramatic impact, when his spectacular right-foot volley at Wembley against Bristol City took the Tigers into the top-flight for the first time in their history.

Ipswich Town - John Wark

The first non-striker to make this list, midfielder John Wark made 559 appearances over three spells with Ipswich Town between 1975 and 1997. This isn't to say that he couldn't score goals too, though; he managed 162 of them for the club.

Wark was a crucial component of the Ipswich team which won the 1978 FA Cup and the 1981 UEFA Cup, and appeared for Scotland at the 1982 World Cup finals, although he was somewhat underused at international level, collecting just 29 caps for his country between 1979 and 1984.

He signed for Liverpool in 1984, winning the league title twice before returning to Portman Road in 1987. Another season away followed at Middlesbrough for the 1990-91 season, but the club were promoted to the inaugural season of the Premier League when he returned the following year. In 2005, he was voted as Ipswich's all-time cult hero in a BBC poll.

Leicester City - Gary Lineker

With two of England's greatest ever goalkeepers, Gordon Banks and Peter Shilton, in contention, as well as Premier League-winning striker Jamie Vardy, there's strong competition to be Leicester's greatest of all-time, but Gary Lineker shades it.

Although Lineker would go on to find fame with Everton, Barcelona, Spurs and England, he made more career appearances for the Foxes than anyone else, scoring 103 goals in 216 appearances in all competitions for them between 1978 and 1985 before moving to Everton, where he was their top scorer in his only season before moving on to Barcelona. He'd go on to win the European Cup Winners Cup and the Copa del Rey in Spain before returning to England to win the FA Cup in 1991.

His achievements at Leicester City were somewhat more modest. He was in their team which won the Second Division title in 1980 and, after they were relegated after just one season back, he was in their team which won promotion back to the top-flight again in 1983. His two full seasons in the First Division before his Everton move each saw him score more than 20 goals, and he was even involved in the rescue of the club from an administration in 2002. A true local hero.

Middlesbrough - Juninho

When Juninho signed for Middlesbrough from the Brazilian giants Sao Paolo for £4.75 million in October 1995, he was a statement signing from a club which had only returned to the Premier League the previous May. When Boro were relegated in 1997, he left the club for Atletico Madrid, but his love affair with Teesside wasn't over yet.

He'd go on to return to The Riverside Stadium twice, first on loan for the 1999-2000 season, and then again in 2002, being part of the Middlesbrough team which won their first ever trophy, the 2004 League Cup. He left the club at the end of that season, but he remains a Middlesbrough legend.