The 12 most hated EFL Championship players in history named and ranked by AI | OneFootball

There are players that we hate and players that we love to hate, but who are the worst? FLW asked ChatGPT to rank the most hated Championship players.

There are some Championship players who end up as well known for how much they're hated as for anything they do on the pitch, but who are the worst of all time? FLW has leaned on AI to see what it thinks.

Whether known for their behaviour on the pitch or their extracurricular activities, there are some players who end up close to universally hated.

It could be ill-discipline or violent tendencies during matches, or the way they carry themselves in their everyday lives, but whatever the reason, they often end up being loathed by the fans of all other clubs.

With this in mind, Football League World wanted to get to the bottom of who is the lowest of the low, so we've asked ChatGPT to rank the most hated Championship players of all-time, and its results will not surprise anybody reading this who's been paying attention to the game in England over the last few years or so.

12 Patrick Bamford

The Leeds United forward is a slightly surprising entry at number twelve. You do get the feeling that Patrick Bamford is hated because he's so middle-class, but ChatGPT chooses to shy away from that and chooses instead to focus on that bit of play-acting that got Anwar El-Ghazi sent off in a fractious match between Leeds and Aston Villa in 2019.

11 Ben Pearson

The Stoke City midfielder makes it into the number eleven position thanks to being "known for time-wasting, constant fouling, and aggressive play". ChatGPT says that, "Fans often cite him as the “dark arts” midfielder of the Championship", to which the only sensible reply to give is to point out that, given that he's picked up 113 yellow cards and 7 red cards throughout his career (and all this by the age of 30, too), at least he isn't very good at not getting caught.

10 Saido Berahino

The former West Bromwich Albion and Stoke City forward primarily makes this list for "his fall from grace, lack of effort, off-field issues, and perceived poor attitude, especially at Stoke". His "fall from grace" is presumably a reference to him spending the summer of 2015 trying to crowbar himself a transfer to Spurs, which the London club must now be relieved didn't happen, having seen what happened to him at Stoke City. He's also been convicted of drink-driving three times, which isn't a strong look.

The incident which led to Richard Keogh's appearance on this list felt at the time like an allegory for the state of the club he played for at the time. He was in the vehicle with team-mates Tom Lawrence and Mason Bennett when Lawrence drunkenly crashed his car into a lamppost after a Derby County team-building night out in September 2019.

Lawrence and Bennett both pleaded guilty to drink-driving and leaving the scene of a crime, but Keogh avoided legal censure, and when he was sacked by Derby he sued the club for wrongful dismissal and was awarded £2.3 million. A knee ligament injury sustained in the crash also kept him out of the Derby team for 15 months.

The Senegalese forward made over 200 Premier League appearances before stepping down into the Championship. He's best remembered for repeatedly spitting at people - to the extent that he ended up in court over it - and describing people he didn't like as racist.

When he signed for Sunderland in July 2008, then-manager Roy Keane said, "He has always been the kind of player opposition teams and supporters love to hate, a thorn in the side, and that's why we're delighted to now have him", only for Diouf to fail to score in 16 games and get transferred to Blackburn the following January after he tried to start a fight with Anton Ferdinand.

ChatGPT highlights his "spitting incidents", his "arrogant demeanour", and signing for Leeds United in 2012 as the biggest reasons for his unpopularity. When websites are running listicles detailing the number of times someone has acted up, it's a sure sign that his attitude may have been somewhat problematic.

7 Steve Morison

The former Millwall, Norwich and Leeds striker - who's currently the manager of former EFL club Sutton United - Steve Morison makes the list for "his no-nonsense style and abrasive character". It's not difficult to see where his reputation for having an "abrasive character" came from. A spiky interview with a BBC reporter after a Sutton match made national newspaper headlines.

There have been plenty of managers who've been antagonistic towards reporters in post-match interviews, but Morison was strikingly honest about why his time at Leeds didn't work out and, as the club's third-highest ever goalscorer behind Neil Harris and Teddy Sheringham, he'll always have a special place in the hearts of Millwall fans.

6 Craig Bellamy

Craig Bellamy's inclusion in this list is proof that the internet never forgets. ChatGPT ascribes his place on it as being down to him being "despised by rivals" on account of "his attitude and confrontational personality", but many of the things for which was best-remembered as a player were inflicted upon his own colleagues, such as having a fight with Newcastle coach John Carver in an airport or, perhaps most infamously, the John Arne Riise golf club incident.

But Bellamy has grown up. His tendency to be able to start a fight in an empty room has gone, and he's been admirably upfront about his mental health struggles. He's also been pretty successful as the manager of the Welsh national men's team, going unbeaten in his first nine games in charge of the team before losing narrowly to Belgium in June.

5 Chris Morgan

The explanation given for the former Sheffield United defender Chris Morgan's name being on this list essentially comes to his disciplinary issues, although ChatGPT does boil it down to one particular incident.

During an away match against Barnsley, Morgan elbowed Barnsley's Iain Hume in the face. Hume was released from hospital with suspected concussion, but had to be readmitted and required emergency surgery on a fractured skull, while it was also established that he'd suffered internal bleeding. Morgan picked up a yellow card for his troubles. The biggest irony of this was that Morgan was a former Barnsley player, who'd been their captain and was even born in the town.

But despite ChatGPT only mentioning this one particular, this was hardly an isolated incident. He was sent off six times each for Barnsley and Sheffield United, holding the club record for red cards at both clubs. His record of twelve career cards matched that of another former Blade with something a reputation; a certain Vinnie Jones.

At the turn of the millennium, while he was at Leeds, Bowyer became a public hate figure after he was charged with GBH along with then team-mate Johnathan Woodgate, for attacking an Asian student outside a nightclub.

Although he was later cleared, Bowyer agreed to pay the victim £170,000 in out-of-court settlements. Despite the acquittal, the trial judge, Mr Justice Henriques, ordered Bowyer to pay his costs and said that his police interviews were "littered with lies".

But that's just the start. Bowyer started young, getting dropped from the England under-18s and sent on a rehabilitation course after failing a drugs test for cannabis. Two years later, shortly after signing for Leeds for £3.5 million, he admitted affray and was fined £4,500 for smashing up a McDonald's restaurant near his family home on the Isle of Dogs. Along with three friends, he threw chairs and injured two staff members, including an Asian staff member who needed stitches to his head.

Booked 99 times in 400 Premier League appearances (the third-highest total in the history of the League, behind Gareth Barry and Wayne Rooney) and part of one of the famous fights between team-mates of all time when he got in scrap with Kieron Dyer (which he later described as a 'moment of madness' to which you can only really reply by saying, "Well, you've had quite a lot of those, haven't you?", there's much else to discuss about Bowyer's history, but these incidents alone demonstrate his worthiness of a place on this particular list.

3 Marlon King

If we're talking about lengthy charge sheets, well, they don't come much longer than that of the former Gillingham, Watford and Birmingham (among others) striker Marlon King, who found himself in the dock on 15 occasions. ChatGPT claims that "many fans were outraged he was continually signed by clubs despite his criminal record", though that really seems as though it's the fault of the clubs concerned rather than the player himself.

Still, King's is a lengthy charge sheet. He went to prison three times; the first time for receiving stolen goods in the form of a BMW car, the second for sexual assault, and the third for dangerous driving. King left the UK following his release from prison for a third time and moved to Zambia with his wife and children. At least, as per this interview in The Athletic from 2020, he seems to have finally learned from his past mistakes.