Ranking the last 10 EFL Championship golden boot winners from worst to best | OneFootball

Football League World ranks the last 10 people to have won the Championship's top scorer award

There have been a plethora of top attacking talents to have graced the Championship over the past decade.

The last two campaigns haven't seen the Golden Boot race be as entertaining, but there was a time not that long ago when multiple frontmen were netting 20 times over the course of the season and not coming close to touching the league's top scorer.

Zan Vipotnik's 23-goal haul saw him join an esteemed group of players to have come away with the Championship's Golden Boot, and placing him in a list among the last 10 winners was a very difficult task. Nevertheless, we at Football League World have done our best.

Taking into account the final goal tally, the number of competitors they had, and the impact on their club's season overall, here are the last 10 winners of the second-tier Golden Boot ranked from worst to best.

10 ? ? Joel Piroe - 2024/25

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We kick off the list with arguably the weakest Golden Boot race the Championship has ever seen, as Joel Piroe walked away with the award, having scored just 19 times throughout the campaign.

The 26-year-old was brought to Leeds United in the summer of 2023 from Swansea City due to his goalscoring prowess in the second tier, so for him to walk away with a top scorer's award was money well spent.

In reality, though, Piroe had scored at least as many, if not more, in both of his years in South Wales, which shows the lack of quality on a whole during the 2024/25 campaign when it came to prolific goalscorers. Burnley midfielder Josh Brownhill came second on 18.

31.5% of that goal tally came in games against Stoke City, too, which is quite funny, but also potentially outlines his lack of threat against some of the better sides in the division.

9 ? ? Matej Vydra - 2017/18

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Matej Vydra's goalscoring effort on the final day of the 2017/18 campaign ensured that Derby County finished in the top six, while also snatching the Golden Boot from Aston Villa's Lewis Grabban.

The Czech international ended the campaign on 21 goals, a great return, with his best performance coming when he netted a hat trick in an early play-off six-pointer away at Middlesbrough in late November.

However, Vydra did net six of his 21 from the penalty spot. Going off of open play goals, four different players ranked higher than him, which does contribute to this second-from-bottom ranking.

He was ineffective in the play-offs, too, and was relegated to the bench for the second leg in the semi-final defeat against Fulham. A good season, but there have been many better recently.

8 ? ? Zan Vipotnik - 2025/26

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This past season's Golden Boot winner, Zan Vipotnik, suffered from not having many legitimate challengers for his crown, as his 23 goals were six more than Oli McBurnie and Haji Wright, who came second in the race.

However, there's no doubt that the 24-year-old's contributions were what helped the Swans secure a top-half finish. His personal tally accounted for 40% of Swansea's total goals in the Championship.

Plus, he scored plenty of goals with limited chances, outperforming his xG by 10, which highlights how clinical the Serbian was last year.

The lack of competition and the fact that it led to a mid-table finish slightly dampens it compared to his peers, but still a good year for Vipotnik in South Wales.

7 ? ? Andre Gray - 2015/16

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Andre Gray's transition from National League bagsman to Championship Golden Boot winner in the space of two seasons is incredible, as his 25-goal campaign in 2015/16 echoed the numbers he was putting up with Luton Town in non-league not long before.

The Jamaican frontman's goals helped fire Burnley back to the Premier League under Sean Dyche, and he had good competitors pushing him all the way to the end.

Perennial Championship goalscorer Ross McCormack, who just misses out on being included on the list, and Abel Hernandez both ended the campaign with 21 and 20 goals, respectively, meaning that Gray had to be on his game to secure the honour.

Other, more recent, top scorers are more fondly remembered in the Championship, but it was still a Champion performance up top for the Burnley frontman a decade ago.

6 ? ? Cuba Akpom - 2022/23

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Now we're starting to get into the upper echelon of Championship Golden Boot races, and we're not even halfway through the list! Not so much a race, but the 28 goals that Chuba Akpom netted during the 2022/23 campaign were incredibly impressive and rather surprising.

The Boro man netted seven more than Viktor Gyokeres and spearheaded an exciting attacking side under Michael Carrick, who wound up finishing in the play-offs.

There was a hat trick in there against Wigan Athletic and a run of nine goals in nine games throughout the run-in, which secured their place in the postseason. Unfortunately, it would be Gyokeres who came out on top, as Coventry City won a cagey two-legged affair 1-0.

Akpom hasn't been able to replicate that level of goalscoring since, but for a standalone season, it's one of the best in recent memory.

5 ? ? Chris Wood - 2016/17

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Before Chris Wood became a potent Premier League goalscorer with the likes of Burnley and Nottingham Forest, he was a brilliant Championship goal-getter, and parted the second tier, and Leeds, with a 27-goal campaign during the 2016/17 term.

That year under Gary Monk was the first since their second-tier return six years earlier that Leeds threatened a play-off run, and Wood was the talisman behind it.

He netted 44% of the Whites' total output, the highlight of which came via a brace in a 2-0 win over Brighton and Hove Albion, who would go on to automatic promotion. Additionally, there were only four braces and no hat tricks in the 27-goal campaign — he was rarely held scoreless and was a handful for every defence in the division.

With Dwight Gale, Tammy Abraham, and Glenn Murray all breathing down his neck on 23, it was a proper Golden Boot race, and one that earns the winner a top-half place on this list.

4 ? ? Sammie Szmodics - 2023/24

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Sammie Szmodics may not have had the same level of competition as other names before him had. Only Adam Armstrong joined him in the 20+ goals club in 2023/24, but, arguably, this single-season campaign is the most important out of the 10 on the list.

The rest of the list details players who helped their side to top half, play-off or automatic promotion finishes, whereas Szmodics netted 27 times for a side battling relegation. As an attacking midfielder. With no penalties!

Putting it bluntly, Blackburn Rovers would have been relegated even if Szmodics was 70% the player he was that year. He was a consistent threat throughout the campaign and netted vital goals in away wins over Leeds and Leicester City in the final four games, the latter of which kept John Eustace's side up on the final day.

The top three are filled with memorable Golden Boot races and top strikers, but the season two years ago from Szmodics is one of the best individual years that this division has ever seen.

3 ? ? Ivan Toney - 2020/21

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The 28 goals that Adam Armstrong scored in the 2020/21 term would have won him the Golden Boot in 15 of the previous 17 Championship campaigns since the first division was renamed. It's just a shame that Ivan Toney netted 31 in the same season.

Toney's first year in the second tier couldn't have gone any better, and it served as an apt stepping stone to where he is now in the England squad ahead of this summer's World Cup.

The Brentford frontman netted braces in three straight games in October, and from then on, everyone knew what he was capable of. In the end, it was quite baffling to realise that it didn't result in the Bees securing automatic promotion.

But, unlike others in the list, the Championship's top scorer pulled through in the play-offs, scoring in the semi-final win over Bournemouth and in the final against Swansea City, helping secure Premier League football for Thomas Frank's side.

From the sheer quality of the people he was up against (Teemu Pukki netted 26 that year, too) to the impact he had on a successful campaign, it has to be a top-three place for Toney.

2 ? ? Teemu Pukki - 2018/19

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Nine players scored 22 goals or more in the 2018/19 Championship campaign. Nine! There's a reason why many point to this year as the greatest Championship season in existence, because there were so many unbelievable goal scorers in the league at once.

Teemu Pukki was the man to take home the Golden Boot, though, bagging 29 en route to the Championship title with Norwich City.

Not many teams could keep the Finnish frontman from scoring against them, with his most impressive run coming in the early stages of 2019, netting eight times in a six-game period. That included games against Leeds and Sheffield United, their two main title rivals, too.

Pukki is highly regarded as one of the best goal scorers in the Championship over the short amount of time he spent in the division, but it's just a shame that there's one man better.

1 ? ? Aleksandar Mitrovic - 2019/20 and 2021/22

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One of only two two-time Championship Golden Boot winners, and arguably the most dominant striker that the second tier has seen in a long while, Alesandar Mitrovic has to take the number one spot here.

The Serbian's 26-goal campaign in the 2019/20 campaign was impressive, just beating Ollie Watkins to the Golden Boot, who ended the year on 25, and having the last laugh in the play-offs against his Brentford side, too, providing an assist for Joe Bryan in their final win.

But his return in 2021 after a rather disappointing Premier League campaign would set the stage for the most impressive goalscoring season that the Championship will likely ever see, netting 43 times in 44 games, including three hat-tricks and a ten-game run between September and November where he scored 15.

Marco Silva's Fulham side were utterly ridiculous during that second year, scoring 106 goals over the course of the campaign, and Mitrovic was the leading cause of that.

Plus, Dominic Solanke scored 29 times that year, too, which would have won him the Golden Boot in all but two of the Championship seasons that have been and gone. Instead, it left him 14 behind the victor...an easy number one choice here.