With the EFL Championship celebrating its 20th birthday on 7 August 2024, we look back at the title winners from across the competition following its rebrand in 2004.
Today – 7 August 2024 – marks 20 years since the first ever matches were played in the rebranded EFL Championship. In the early kick-off that day in 2004, Leeds United – who just three years earlier had graced the UEFA Champions League semi-finals – took on Derby County, a game officiated by future Champions League final referee Mark Clattenburg.
More than 50 teams have played in the Championship over the course of 20 years, some of those only briefly featuring before returning to the big time (Aston Villa, Newcastle United, West Ham United), others who have spent more time in it than they’d have believed or imagined (Leeds, Middlesbrough) and others who have enjoyed their brief foray there on their way up the EFL divisions (Burton Albion, Wycombe Wanderers, Yeovil Town). Then there’s the seemingly permanent fixtures of Cardiff City, Derby and Queens Park Rangers, clocking up close to 2,500 matches in the division between them.
In one of two articles looking back of 20 years of the Championship as we know it, we take a trip down memory lane and look back the title winners and the statistics that underpinned their success.
The Title Winners
Across the 20 seasons of the Championship, there have been 13 different title-winning teams, with seven winning the league twice and six teams taking the crown once.
Mick McCarthy is the only manager to win it with two different teams (Sunderland in 2004-05 and Wolves in 2008-09), while the other manager with two titles is Daniel Farke, both with Norwich in 2019 and 2021. The last eight titles have also all been won by non-British managers since Sean Dyche led Burnley to the top in 2016.
Between 2004-05 and 2012-13, the league was won with an average of 92 points, which is skewed slightly by the 100+ point seasons of Reading in 2005-06 and Newcastle in 2009-10. Teams with fewer than 90 points won it five times in the first nine seasons but since 2013-14, every single champion has earned 90 or more points, with the average for Championship winners across these past 11 seasons jumping to 95 points.
West Brom won the league with 81 points in 2007-08, which would have been enough for only a fifth-place finish in 2023-24, a season in which Ipswich Town came second with 96 points, a tally that would have won them the league in 13 out of the previous 19 seasons. Between Leicester and Ipswich, they earned themselves a combined total of 193 points to gain promotion in 2023-24; compare this with 2007-08 (160 points) and 2012-13 (166) when far lower tallies were required to reach the Premier League.
Sunderland won two of the first three Championship titles, with one of the worst-ever Premier League campaigns sandwiched in between. In 2004-05, fresh from losing in the previous season’s play-offs, the Black Cats started the season bottom thanks to a 2-0 opening-day loss to Coventry and still only had five points after six games (the second fewest for a team to recover to win the league) but eventually went top of the league in March.
They didn’t relinquish control of top spot after a win on 19 March over the side who had put them rock bottom on the opening day, Coventry. Sunderland fans should really have enjoyed March more in hindsight – they won more league games that month (4) than they did in the entirety of the 2005-06 Premier League season (3) as they finished bottom with 15 points and came straight back down.
The following season, 2006-07, didn’t start much better – they lost each of their opening four games but recovered to become the first and only side in English Football League history to have such a bad start but still win the league. The arrival of Roy Keane was the catalyst, taking charge of them for the first time on 9 September against Derby with his side 23rd and eventually going top exactly seven months later, on 9 April – the latest into a season any title-winning Championship side has led the table for a first time.
Incredibly, they were 12th at the turn of 2006 and only spent 15 days top of the Championship all season, the fewest of any title winner across the 20 years. They then started the following the season with a 1-0 win over Tottenham thanks to a Michael Chopra goal – the most recent occasion a Championship winner has won their opening Premier League game of the following season.
In between Sunderland’s two title wins was Steve Coppell’s incredible and record-breaking Reading side of 2005-06. Their record speaks for itself: most points (106), joint-most wins (31), fewest defeats (2), best goal difference (+67) and joint-fewest goals conceded (32) of any Championship title-winning side. Between 1 November and 28 December in 2005, the Royals strung together a 10-game winning run, which wasn’t equalled by any Championship side until 2019. After losing 2-1 to Plymouth in their season opener, Reading picked up 79% of points available and eventually finished 16 points clear of Sheffield United in second place.
Their side wasn’t packed with players with a plethora of previous Premier League quality, either: only three players who played for them that season had previously played in the Premier League (Glen Little, John Oster and Chris Makin) and when they faced Middlesbrough on the opening day of the 2006-07, all 14 players who featured in that 3-2 comeback win made their Premier League debuts.
The previous season’s play-off final losers, West Brom, won the 2007-08 Championship title with the fewest points of any winner (81), also conceding 55 goal – a record until Norwich won it in 2018-19 while shipping 57.
The Baggies were the only side in the Championship that season to score more than 80 goals in what was a particularly unusual season. Colchester scored 62 goals, the joint-sixth most, but finished bottom. The eight points separating them and Scunthorpe in 23rd were the biggest gap between two teams that season. West Brom only finished 29 points clear of relegation themselves, comfortably the smallest gap between first place and 22nd in a Championship campaign (in 2005-06, 64 points had separated Reading and Crewe).
Thirty-four-year-old Kevin Phillips scored exactly 25% of the Baggies’ goals (22 of 88) and is the oldest player to have scored more than 20 goals in a Championship season.
Irishman McCarthy became the first and, so far, only manager to win the Championship with two clubs in 2009, leading Wolves to the title. They spent 226 days top of the league in 2008-09, the second-most of any side in a Championship season ever and, barring 21 days in October, they were top of the table from the end of August onwards.
With clean sheets hard to come by (just 14 – the second-fewest of any Championship winner), they were fired on by the goals of Sylvan Ebanks-Blake, who had signed from Plymouth in January 2008. Ebanks-Blake became the first player to net 25 goals in a Championship season during Wolves’ 2008-09 title-winning year and, having scored 23 in 2007-08, became the first player to net 20+ goals in back-to-back Championship seasons, a feat achieved by only Jordan Rhodes and Troy Deeney (both across 2012-13 to 2014-15) since then.
After 10 goals in 76 Premier League games, Ebanks-Blake dropped back to the Championship to score another 14 times for Wolves before playing nine goalless games for McCarthy at Ipswich Town in 2014.
Newcastle have only spent two seasons in the Championship but they’ve won the title in both, doing so in 2009-10 and 2016-17. Both title wins were helped by a healthy dose of Premier League quality, being able to call on the likes of Alan Smith, Kevin Nolan, Steve Harper and Fabricio Coloccini first time around, and Ayoze Pérez, Jonjo Shelvey, Matt Ritchie and Dwight Gayle in 2016-17.
The Magpies finished 11 points clear of West Brom in 2010, helped by a points tally of 102, 30 victories, 90 goals scored and losing only four games, although one of those was a 2-1 defeat at Scunthorpe in October, who would finish a full 50 points behind them. They didn’t lose a single home game and dropped just eight points at St James’ Park all season long.
When they once again dropped into the Championship in 2016, expectations were high for a similar haul when manager Rafael Benítez agreed to stay on as manager, although it didn’t start well. They lost their opening two games to Fulham and Huddersfield to find themselves in the relegation zone, but recovered to win 13 of their next 15 and went top on 18 October after beating Barnsley.
Top position in the table was then shared between them and Brighton (managed by Chris Hughton, who had led them to the 2010 title) for the remainder of the campaign, with the Seagulls leading the way for 30 of the last 31 days. Unfortunately for them, an 89th-minute goal by Jack Grealish for Aston Villa saw them draw 1-1 on the final day to drop to second place, while Newcastle won 3-0 against Barnsley, the side they’d beaten to go top in October.
Across their two Championship campaigns, they’d spent 65% on top of the table, comfortably the highest percentage of any side across the 20 years, so it seems only right they won both titles.
Neil Warnock’s only title-winning campaign as a Football League manager came in 2010-11 with Queens Park Rangers, earning several Championship records.
Although they only scored 71 goals – at that point, the lowest by a Championship winner – the Hoops kept 25 clean sheets, a record total by a Championship side in a league season, with 24 kept by goalkeeper Paddy Kenny, the joint-most by a goalkeeper in a season (the other was achieved by Radek Cerny). Overall, QPR equalled Reading’s 2005-06 total of just 32 goals conceded, the joint-fewest by a Championship winner.
Warnock’s side led the table for 253 days that season, the most by a team in a single campaign, and were never out of the top two after hammering Barnsley 4-0 in their first game. They also began their campaign with a run of 19 matches undefeated, at that point the longest unbeaten start to a Championship campaign (Brighton in 2015-16 later eclipsed it with 21 matches, although they only finished third).
Although their team was made up of many experienced players (at 28 years and 28 days, their average starting XI age was second only to Portsmouth that season), 21-year-old Adel Taarabt was their star player, scoring 19 goals and winning the Championship Player of the Year award.
Arguably the most improbable Championship title win (other than maybe Sunderland’s recovery in 2006-07) was Reading in 2011-12, who spent just 17 days on top of the table, 16 of which were the final 16 days of the campaign. In November, the Royals were 14th in the table and 18 points behind top spot – the biggest points deficit that a side has recovered from to win the title.
In their opening 17 games, they’d lost more matches (6) than they’d won (5) but only three of those games had seen either they or their opponents win by two clear goals. Between 26 November and the end of the season, the Royals won 22 out of 29 matches, picking 68 points – 16 more than anyone else.
The side who topped the table at the start of this run, Southampton, had to settle for second place having been top for 187 days, comfortably the most of any side to not win the Championship title in a season, while the one-point winning margin (89 points to 88) was the smallest in a season up to that stage.
The shrewd signing of Jason Roberts in January helped the Royals over the line, with Roberts contributing six goals in 17 games, in which Reading won 14, an 82%-win ratio that is the best by a striker in any Championship campaign. The sub goals of Adam Le Fondre also helped – nine in total, a record by a player in a campaign, including braces in back-to-back sub appearances in April against Leeds and Southampton. Le Fondre then followed this up by breaking the Premier League substitute goal record the following season, scoring eight off the bench in 2012-13, although they were relegated straight back to the Championship.
Cardiff won their first Premier League promotion in 2012-13, finishing eight points clear of Hull in second, and were the runaway leaders for most of the season, topping the table from December 2 onwards.
Although 2012-13 was the second-highest scoring Championship season ever with 1,494 goals, Cardiff are the only champions who didn’t have a single player score at least 10 goals. Three players – Peter Whittingham, Aron Gunnarsson and Heidar Helguson – all scored eight times, although the mid-season signing of striker Fraizer Campbell did add some extra goals to the mix, scoring seven in 12 games to send Cardiff into the Premier League.
Leicester’s two Championship title wins came 10 years apart. In 2013-14 under Nigel Pearson, the Foxes became the third side, after Reading and Newcastle, to win 100+ points in a season (102), while their 31 wins equalled Reading in 2005-06 and wasn’t matched until Leicester themselves in 2023-24 also achieved that tally.
There were other parallels between the two title-winning seasons: a nine-game winning run in each campaign (making Leicester the only Championship side to do that on more than one occasion) and striker Jamie Vardy, who scored 16 in 37 games in 2013-14 and 18 in 35 games in 2023-24. While Vardy, who turned 37 in January, was used more frequently as a substitute last season (seven of his 18 goals were off the bench), in 2013-14 he often partnered David Nugent up front.
Nugent, who has the joint second-most Championship goals in history (125), was involved in 32 goals that season (20 goals, 12 assists), the second-most of any player behind Leeds’ Ross McCormack, with Nugent scoring 20 in a season for the only time in the Championship. From Christmas until the end of the season, Leicester won 10 more points than anyone else (60) and scored the most goals (50), with no player involved in more goals than Nugent in that time.
Between winning the Championship in 2014 and returning to it in 2023, Leicester found the time to win the Premier League, reach the quarter-final of the Champions League and the semi-final of the Conference League.
Although returning to the Championship was a shock to the system, there were no such worries on the pitch – across their first 14 games, Leicester won 13 of them, the best start to a season at this level since 1905. A late season wobble saw them drop to third briefly in April following a run of four defeats in six games, but five wins in their last eight games gave them the top spot that they deserved – their 203 days top of the league was the most by a side in a season since QPR’s record total in 2010-11.
The creativity of Abdul Fatawu (13 assists) and Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall (14 assists) were two standouts for the Foxes, as Vardy averaged a goal every 98 minutes, the best ratio of any player with five or more goals.
Burnley have twice lifted the Championship title, in 2016 and 2023, doing so with vastly differing styles under their respective managers in both seasons.
Their 2015-16 Championship title win was achieved despite not topping the table until late February, but their end-of-season form saw them across the line. The Clarets went the final 23 matches of the campaign unbeaten, conceding just 12 goals across this run and winning 55 points – 10 more than anyone else in that time. In Championship history, only Reading in 2005-06 (33 games in a row between August and February) have ever enjoyed a longer unbeaten run within a single campaign. Sean Dyche’s side lost only five games all season, the fewest since Newcastle in 2009-10, although there were 15 draws, the second-most of any Championship winner. Dyche remains the last English manager to win the Championship.
Following Premier League relegation in the summer of 2022, Burnley appointed Vincent Kompany as manager. The Clarets then won the Championship title with 101 points, only the fourth side to break the 100-point mark, and suffered only three defeats, the fewest since Reading in 2005-06. Two of the three managers to beat Burnley in 2022-23 were then managers of relegated Premier League clubs alongside Burnley in 2023-24 – Rob Edwards won with Watford, then moved to Luton, while Paul Heckingbottom won with Sheffield United and was sacked early the following season.
Kompany had drastically changed Burnley’s style of play from their 2016 title win: they completed over 22,000 passes, having completed just under 13,000 in 2015-16. Under Kompany, just 10% of the passes Burnley were playing were defined as long passes; under Dyche in 2015-16, 23% were long passes. Either way, both Clarets teams were champions.
Wolves hadn’t been top of the Championship since they’d won the league in 2009 under McCarthy, but they returned to the summit in October 2017 under new manager Nuno Espírito Santo. They’d dropped into League One in 2013 but were now on their way back to the Premier League, with a team containing the talent of Diogo Jota, Ivan Cavaleiro, Willy Boly, Barry Douglas, Rúben Neves and many more.
They won 30 Championship games overall, while their 24 clean sheets were the most by any team in a season since QPR’s record of 25 in 2010-11, with all 24 kept by goalkeeper John Ruddy, a joint Championship record.
They collected 99 points in 45 games and then went to play already-relegated Sunderland at the Stadium of Light on the final day. Despite being 65 points ahead of the Black Cats, Wolves lost 3-0. It is the second-most points clear a team has been of another and then suffered defeat in Football League history; it probably didn’t take the shine off an impressive season and Wolves have remained in the top flight ever since.
Norwich City began yo-yoing between the Championship title and the bottom of the Premier League table between 2018 and 2022, twice winning the league (2019 and 2021) and twice finishing bottom (2020 and 2022). Both title successes came under German manager Daniel Farke, who became just the second manager to lift the Championship twice, after McCarthy, and the first to ever do so with the same club multiple times.
The 2018-19 victory saw them make a slow start – three defeats and five points in their opening six matches had the Canaries in 18th spot, but they then lost just three of their remaining 40 games, with their 93 goals bettered by just three Championship winners. Their defensive record was not the best, conceding 57 goals and keeping just 13 clean sheets – both worst totals for any Championship champion. However, the goals of Teemu Pukki – 29 in total, the most by a player in a season since 2012-13 – and the creativity of Emiliano Buendía (12 assists), Marco Stiepermann (72 open play chances created, second most) and Onel Hernández (67 open play chances created, third most) kept the chances and goals flowing.
After picking up a mere 21 points in a terrible Premier League campaign in 2019-20, Norwich were back in the Championship for the 2020-21 campaign and once again won the title, this time with more wins (29), more clean sheets (18), more points (97) and far fewer goals conceded (36) than in 2018-19.
The Canaries were particularly impressive away from home, winning 15 out of 23 games, the most by a team in a Championship campaign across the 20 years. Pukki and Buendía remained the pivotal players, the Finnish striker scoring 26 times in 41 matches, while Buendía created the most chances in the division (123) and registered the most assists (16), while also chipping in with 15 goals himself in a seriously impressive individual campaign.
Leeds had enjoyed a spectacularly memorable first campaign under Marcelo Bielsa in 2018-19, finishing third and losing in the play-off semi-finals to Derby despite leading 2-0 on aggregate at one stage in the second leg. Bielsa remained in charge for 2019-20 and Leeds managed to, finally, return to the Premier League for the first time since 2004.
Known for their attacking style under the universally regarded Argentine coach, Leeds had the most shots (755), shots on target (251) and touches in the opposition box (1,440) of any side, enjoying impressive wins over Middlesbrough (4-0), Hull (4-0), Stoke (5-0) and Charlton (4-0) along the way. But it wasn’t just their attack that was impressive: the Whites kept 22 clean sheets, a total bettered by just two Championship winners.
They ended their campaign with a run of 12 wins in 14 matches – with 10 of those wins coming to nil – and eventually won the title by a margin of 10 points, the largest since Newcastle in 2010.
Fulham’s 2021-22 Championship title win was based on scoring goals – 106 were netted as they took the title, the most by a Championship team in a single season.
They had an almost unbelievable total of three 7-0 wins during the campaign, with two of them away at Blackburn and Reading (the other was at home to Luton), accounting for three of the seven wins by 7+ goals in Championship history, and they were first English league side with three wins by seven goals in one season since Notts County in 1948-49.
Aleksandar Mitrovic scored 43 of their 106 goals, 10 more than any other player has ever scored in a Championship season, and more than two clubs managed in total in 2021-22 (Barnsley scored 33, Hull scored 41). By 15 January that season, he’d netted 27 goals in 21 games, which was as many as Fulham had managed in the Premier League the previous campaign. In total, the Cottagers had 279 shots on target in their 46 games – the most by a team in a season Opta has on record from 2013-14 onwards. An impressive way to return to the top flight.
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