Championship Golden Boot Odds

The 2023/24 Championship season is just around the corner, and it looks set to be an entertaining one, with the likes of Leeds United, Leicester City and Southampton all dropping into England's second-tier, while the likes of Plymouth Argyle, Ipswich Town and Sheffield Wednesday were promoted from League One.

Last season, Chuba Akpom finished as the Championship's Golden Boot winner with 28 goals for Middlesbrough, seven more than Viktor Gyokeres of Coventry City who has recently sealed a £20m move to Liga NOS outfit, Sporting Lisbon.

Here, we assess each candidate for the 2023/24 Championship top scorer award.

At 36 years of age, Jamie Vardy only has a few more years of playing professional football left in him, but he will be forced to spend next season in the second tier of English football with Leicester City following their relegation from the Premier League this year.

Despite the forward’s advancing years, do not be surprised if Vardy ends up bagging the top goalscorer prize in 2023/24 – the Englishman has been a reliable goal-getter for the Foxes for most of the last decade. V

ardy won the Premier League Golden Boot in 2019/20 with 23 goals, and managed to score at least 13 goals in seven of the nine seasons that Leicester spent in the top-flight. In the weaker Championship, he should certainly be able to carry on such a fine rate of goalscoring to fire Leicester straight back up into the Premier League.

Patson Daka has failed to impress for Leicester City ever since signing for the Foxes for a reported £22m back in 2021, with the former RB Salzburg man netting just nine Premier League goals in 53 outings for the East Midlands outfit since his arrival.

But, with Leicester’s relegation from the Premier League meaning that the club will be playing second-tier football next season, could that be a blessing in disguise for Daka personally? The Zambia international struggled to adapt to the frantic pace and physicality of the Premier League, but a drop-down to the Championship provides him with the opportunity to regain some form and confidence – the lower standard in comparison to the Premier League could help Daka get back the goalscoring groove that saw Leicester initially pay over £20m for his services.

Daka scored 24 and 27 league goals during the 2019/20 and 2020/21 seasons respectively in the Austrian Bundesliga for RB Salzburg– could he repeat that kind of form for Leicester in their upcoming Championship campaign?

Chuba Akpom was last season’s Championship top goalscorer with 28 goals to his name – could he repeat the feat again this season, and become the first player to do so since striker Sylvan Ebanks-Blake won the award in consecutive seasons in 2007/08 and 2008/09?

Based on his goalscoring exploits last campaign, it is certainly a possibility. The former Arsenal youth academy player has been a revelation for Middlesbrough ever since signing for the Teessiders in 2020, with his 28 goals helping Boro to finish in the play-offs in 2022/23, with eventual play-off runners-up Coventry City knocking them out in the semi-finals by a single goal.

Middlesbrough will need Akpom to deliver a similar level of performance this season as they aim for yet another promotion push in an attempt to make it back to the Premier League.

Finishing three places behind Akpom in the goalscoring charts last season was Dutch forward Joel Piroe, who finished the 2022/23 campaign with 19 goals to his name as he led Swansea City to an impressive 10th-place finish.

His 19 goals mean that he finished as the Swans’ top scorer for a second consecutive season, and the hope will now be that Piroe can continue his fine form going into another campaign, one in which Swansea will surely be aiming for a spot in the play-offs after their top-half finish this year.

The 23-year-old, who has scored a total of 43 goals in 89 outings for the Welsh side and will also want to add to his personal honours collection by having an outstanding goalscoring season – winning the Championship Golden Boot would be a nice addition to the only other achievement he has – the Golden Boot award he picked up playing for the Netherlands at the 2017 U-19 Euros.

Kelechi Iheanacho has proven to be a flop during his time at Leicester ever since joining the club from Manchester City in 2017 - in six Premier League seasons with the Foxes, Iheanacho has managed to score more than five league goals in a season just once (bagging 12 in 2020/21).

The Nigerian’s poor form is not totally down to him however, with managerial upheaval at the King Power, the different systems those managers utilised, and poor work behind the scenes in filling Leicester’s squad with quality in the transfer market all contributing to not only Iheanacho’s poor performances but also Leicester’s overall dysfunction on the pitch over the past couple of seasons.

But, like his fellow African teammate Patson Daka, Leicester’s relegation could hand Iheanacho a chance – the Championship and its lesser quality than the Premier League provides Iheanacho with the opportunity to regain some confidence and form in front of goal. Can he finally start performing for Leicester next season, and begin to justify the £25m that was spent on him six years ago?

Patrick Bamford has scored for Leeds United more times than he has for any other club he has played for, with his 51 strikes in 151 appearances for the Whites making him somewhat of a key man for the club in recent years.

His 16 goals in the 2019/20 campaign were a vital part of Leeds United making it back into the Premier League after a 16-year absence, and his impressive haul of 17 in their first season back in the top-flight had people thinking that the striker had turned a new leaf after years of underwhelming performances across loan spells at many different clubs.

But, Bamford then reverted to his old self by following up that impressive campaign with a combined 6 goals across the following two seasons, with his profligacy in front of goal a reason why Leeds struggled so much this year and were ultimately relegated.

Bamford will have to channel the spirit of that iconic 2019/20 campaign once again as Leeds look to get straight back into the Premier League at the first time of asking, with the prospect of a return a huge motivating factor for Bamford to perform well. And were he to score enough to claim the top scorer prize next season, Bamford would become the first Leeds player since Chris Wood to do so.

Striker Che Adams perfectly fits the mould of a player who has struggled to step up to the mark ever since making the move to a Premier League side from the Championship because that is not his level.

Adams joined Southampton in 2019 from Birmingham City for a reported fee of £15m, but has found it tough to adapt to life at St Mary’s – his poor goal record of 25 in 124 appearances for the Saints is a testament to that.

The forward seems much more at home in the Championship, where he did his best work and had the best goalscoring season of his career in 2018/19, scoring 22 goals for the Blues. In what will be their first season back in the second division since 2012, Southampton will need Adams to reproduce that kind of form if they are also to make it straight back up to the Premier League.

6-foot 7-inch Paul Onuachu towers over previous “big-man centre-forward” Championship Golden Boot winners such as Chris Wood and Daryl Murphy in terms of height, but can he come close to repeating their goalscoring exploits in English football’s second tier?

Onuachu has previously played in both the Danish and Belgian top-flights for Midtjylland and Genk respectively, where he was a fairly reliable goalscoring force, even once bagging 33 for Genk in 2020/21 (which was the most that any player had scored in the division since Erwin Vandenbergh’s 39 goals back in 1980).

But, his time in England has been poor, mostly through no fault of his own. Signed on deadline day in January for nearly £20m, Onuachu was handed just four starts and a total of 405 minutes of action, which naturally saw him bag no goals.

If he does stay with the Saints going into next season and is given a proper opportunity in the side, he could potentially replicate the goalscoring form he showed during his days in Belgium, and come close to scoring the 27 that both Wood and Murphy, themselves towering target-men, both bagged when they were in the Championship.

Adam Armstrong was a solid Championship goalscorer just a few years ago, scoring 16 goals in 2019/20 and a stunning 28 in 2020/21 for Blackburn Rovers.

But, with that kind of form comes Premier League attention, and Southampton snapped up the former Newcastle academy player for £15m. But, like Che Adams, Armstrong has shown that he seems to be one of those players who is great in the Championship but not good enough to cut it in the Premier League, with his abysmal record of four goals in 53 outings across a two-season spell at St Mary’s testament to that.

Armstrong, and Southampton, now find themselves back in the second tier, and it will be interesting to see how he gets on. Can he again produce the goalscoring form that earned him a move to Southampton in the first place, or will he continue to miserably flop?

Time will tell if Armstrong can recapture his lost form, but if he can again get to the 28-goal mark like he did with Blackburn just three seasons ago, he would trump the tally of the last Southampton player to finish as Championship top scorer – the great Rickie Lambert with 27 in the Saints’ promotion-winning season of 2011/2012.

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