EFL’s promoted teams often don’t have the Golden Boot winner – but it doesn’t matter

Every club, at all times, are in the market for a striker — at least, that is how it seems.

There is no quality more expensive in the transfer market than being a regular goalscorer. These are the signings that can make or break a team’s season.

But the last two years across all three English Football League (EFL) divisions have shown a break with the trend, as the Golden Boot winners in the Championship, League One and League Two have not come from promoted teams.

This season’s Championship top scorer, Sammie Szmodics of Blackburn Rovers, had a career-best 27 goals — including two on the final day to spare them relegation to League One. There was quite a gap to Southampton’s Adam Armstrong (21), who was next on the second tier’s goalscoring chart, with Leeds United’s Crysencio Summerville and Plymouth Argyle’s Morgan Whittaker (both 19) completing the podium.

Szmodics’ achievement is rare, but not unheard of.

He is the first player to be Championship top scorer while representing a club who did not at least make the play-offs since 2016-17, when Chris Wood scored 27 goals for Leeds, who finished seventh. Szmodics is also the division’s first Golden Boot winner for a decade to play for a team finishing in the bottom half of the table. Ross McCormack, again with Leeds, achieved that feat in 2013-14, scoring 27 times as they came 15th.

In 11 of the previous 20 English second-tier seasons (2003-04 to 2022-23), the division’s Golden Boot winner played for a promoted club. They have represented a team to make the play-offs but fall short in them on four occasions, a top-half side who failed to reach the play-offs three times and a bottom-half club just twice (Leeds’ McCormack in 2013-14 and Danny Graham at Watford in 2010-11).

One rung down the ladder in League One, Charlton Athletic’s Alfie May has taken the Golden Boot with 23 goals as his team finished 16th. Colby Bishop, who got promoted with champions Portsmouth, scored 21 while Barnsley’s Devante Cole and Stevenage’s Jamie Reid managed 18 each. Following high-scoring campaigns at Cheltenham Town, where May scored 20 and 23 League One goals in successive seasons, Charlton got value for their £250,000 ($300,000) investment last summer.

May is in particularly rare company. The previous player to be the third tier’s top scorer with a bottom-half club was Jamie Cureton at Bristol Rovers in 1998-99.

Another player to have continued his good form from last season was League Two top scorer Macaulay Langstaff of Notts County, with his 28 goals coming on the back of a record-breaking 42-goal campaign for the same club as they were promoted from the National League. Of the EFL’s three Golden Boot winners this season, Notts looked most likely to win promotion before they lost manager Luke Williams to Swansea City of the Championship in January and slid to a 14th-place finish.

Langstaff is the first player representing a bottom-half side to win the League Two Golden Boot since John Akinde with Barnet in 2016-17.

Behind Langstaff in the fourth tier’s scoring charts, Paul Mullin (Wrexham, 24), Matt Smith (Salford City, also 24) and Davis Keillor-Dunn (Mansfield Town, 22) proved that having a talismanic striker does not do much harm, with both Wrexham and Mansfield getting automatically promoted.

But how about the other promotion-winning teams? Although the play-offs will see another club from each of the three divisions go up in the next few weeks, four automatically promoted sides — Leicester City, Ipswich Town, Portsmouth and Stockport County — each had a good spread of goals throughout their squad.

All four had three players who scored 10 or more, while four Mansfield players reached double figures. The other two automatically promoted EFL sides this season — Derby County and Wrexham — relied on two main goalscorers, with 16 and 19 different scorers in each squad respectively.

So a spread of goals — built on a solid defence — counts just as much as having the division’s individual leading scorer.

There is more than one way to gather the goals required for promotion. Much depends on the team’s style.

Leicester and Portsmouth relied on a possession-based approach, where breaking down teams is more strategic and less direct, whereas Ipswich and Derby scored more goals in transition situations. Of course, having a 30-goals-a-season predator is not a hindrance — look at Erling Haaland since he joined Manchester City — but the holistic approach is more important, especially if the squad’s leading forward succumbs to injury.

The same was true last season, with Championship top scorer Chuba Akpom’s 28 goals not enough to help Middlesbrough get promoted, although it did earn him a move to leading Dutch side Ajax last summer. Down in League Two, Bradford City’s Andy Cook also missed out on promotion, due to a play-off semi-final defeat to Carlisle United.

The joint Golden Boot winners in League One in 2022-23 were Conor Chaplin, who was promoted with Ipswich, and Peterborough United’s Jonson Clarke-Harris, who both scored 26 times. Though Peterborough achieved a top-six finish, Clarke-Harris missed out on promotion thanks to Sheffield Wednesday’s comeback against all odds in their play-off semi-final.

Szmodics had left Peterborough for Blackburn the season before in a deal worth £1.8million, plus add-ons, and few players have been more important to their side this season. Blackburn could have a job on their hands to keep the 28-year-old at Ewood Park this summer, although they would likely make a decent profit if he moves on.

While Szmodics’ 27-goal haul was impressive, the Championship Golden Boot winner from 2021-22, Aleksandar Mitrovic, retains the outright record for most goals scored in one Championship season (since it was rebranded in 2004) with 43 for Fulham, who won the title that season.

Mitrovic went on to land a £50million transfer to Al Hilal in the Saudi Pro League in August 2023, after one full season back in the top flight with Fulham.

In the Premier League, Sunderland’s Kevin Phillips is the long-held example of a player scoring goals immediately after their club come up from the EFL. In the 1999-2000 season, he got 30 to win the Golden Shoe, which is awarded to the leading scorer across Europe’s top flights, with the weighting in favour of the highest-ranked divisions.

Thriving in a team who are struggling is a much tougher ask than for those competing at the top of the table.

“When you’re part of a team that’s full of confidence, which we were in my first two seasons, I knew that if I missed one chance, there’d be another one coming along very shortly,” Phillips said in an interview with PlanetFootball. “So you never got anxious, you never snatched at the first one, you just knew that you could be relaxed and if you missed it didn’t matter – I’d get another chance in the next 10 minutes.

“But the Premier League is a different ballgame. You generally only get one or two opportunities in a game and really you need to try and take one. That season, I managed to take a fair few. The biggest thing was wondering if we’d create enough opportunities in the Premier League. I’ve never doubted my confidence, my self-belief, but when it’s a big jump and you’ve only had a couple of years in the Championship, it was a big step.”

If the trend of the past two seasons continues then having a leading goalscorer might not guarantee promotion.

One thing is for sure: most managers would still rather have one than not.

(Top photo: Alex Dodd – CameraSport via Getty Images)