Championship Winner/Top Goalscorer Odds

Norwich City have won the Championship or the second tier of English football on three different occasions and look extremely likely to finish top yet again.

The Canaries’ most recent display of Championship dominance was in the 2020/21 season in which Norwich finished top of the league with 29 wins, ten draws and only seven losses.

However, history repeated itself when, like the 2018/19 season, Norwich finished rock bottom of the Premier League in 20th.

Despite their shortcomings in the top tier, Norwich are proven heavyweights in the Championship and can never be discounted in the title race.

A big factor in Norwich’s recent dominance in the Championship is Finnish frontman Teemu Pukki.

Since his move from Danish club Brondby in 2018, Pukki has scored 77 goals for The Canaries, most of these coming in the Championship.

In the two Championship seasons he competed in, Pukki scored 29 goals and 26 goals in the 2018/19 and 2020/21 seasons respectively. The Finn’s 29-goal season won him the Golden Boot, whilst his 26-goal effort saw him fall third behind Brentford’s Ivan Toney (33) and Blackburn’s Adam Armstrong (28).

These previous strong showings make Pukki one of the biggest candidates for Championship top scorer this season.

Watford’s recent stint in the Premier League only lasted one season, with The Hornets finishing 19th with only 23 points and returning to the Championship.

Bar the 2020/21 season, which saw Watford compete in the Championship and finish second behind Norwich with 27 wins, ten draws and only nine losses, Watford had enjoyed a particularly long run in the top tier.

Before their promotion in the 2014/15 season, Watford had spent eight successive seasons in the Championship, finishes varying from second all the way down to 16th.

However, The Hornets’ extended stay in the Premier League shows that they can compete at the top level, suggesting that it is likely their return to the Championship could be a short one.

Emmanuel Dennis has been at Watford for only a season but has already made a big impact for The Hornets.

The Nigerian was Watford’s top scorer in his first season with the club, scoring ten goals in 35 appearances. Dennis scored five more goals than second-place Hernandez and had a 23% goal conversion rate, the highest in the team.

Though Dennis doesn’t have any experience in the Championship, mostly playing his football in either Germany, Belgium or Ukraine, he did score double figures in the Premier League. This implies that The Nigerian is likely to be one of, if not the top scorer in the Championship this season.

Another Watford player that could be in the running for Championship top scorer is Joao Pedro.

The Brazilian joined the London club from Fluminese back in 2020 and has played in both the Premier League and the Championship with the team.

Pedro only has 12 goals in 67 appearances, but nine of those came in his debut season in the Championship. This ability to score this amount in his first season in English football suggests that Pedro is very likely to be more than successful this season, even challenging for top scorer.

Burnley’s six-season stint in the Premier League finally came to a close with a disappointing 18th place finish and a final day relegation.

Burnley do have experience with jumping straight back up to the top flight, as The Clarets did in the 2015/16 season. After a 19th place finish in the Premier League, Burnley returned to the Championship where they finished top of the league.

However, this time around, The Clarets will be without manager Sean Dyche who led Burnley through their ups and downs through English football.

Despite his absence, Burnley still look likely to make the hop back up to the Premier League.

Jay Rodriguez joined Burnley from West Bromwich in 2019 and has since gone on to make just under 100 (96) appearances for The Clarets. In that time Rodriguez has only scored 11 goals for the club, but they have all come in the Premier League, a notoriously harder league to play in than the Championship.

Rodriguez’s time at West Bromwich in the Championship however shows his potential for Burnley in the second tier.

Rodriguez scored 22 goals for The Baggies in the 2018/19 season, just seven less than Golden Boot winner Pukki.

West Brom finished the 2021/22 Championship season in a slightly underwhelming tenth, eight points adrift of the Play-off places.

This meant that The Baggies couldn’t make the immediate jump back up to the Premier League after their 19th place finish and relegation in 2021.

The last time West Brom found themselves back in the second tier it took The Baggies two seasons to get back to the Premier League, which could be what is about to be replicated in the 2022/23 season. That time, in the 2018/19 and 2019/20 seasons, West Brom finished fourth and then second.

24-year-old Karlan Grant has been at West Brom since 2020, where he has made 65 appearances for The Baggies, scoring 19 times.

Last season, Grant scored 18 of his 19 West Brom goals in the Championship, showing he is very much capable of scoring high numbers in the league.

This was also shown in his time at Huddersfield where he scored 19 goals in a Championship season. This consistency is one of the many factors pushing Grant towards potentially being the top scorer in the Championship this season.