The EFL is famed for its high-tempo, attacking football which has seen lots of high-scoring seasons, for both individuals and teams. This article will examine these prolific goal scorers and how goal-scoring patterns have changed over time.
Top Goal-Scorers In A Single EFL Season
| Player Name | Club | League | Season | Goals Scored | Summary |
| Aleksandar Mitrovic | Fulham | Championship | 2021/22 | 43 | Mitrovic holds the record for most goals scored in a single EFL season as he netted almost a goal a game to fire Fulham to promotion. |
| Jordan Rhodes | Huddersfield Town | League One | 2011/12 | 36 | Jordan Rhodes held the record that Mitrovic now has for exactly 10 years after his barnstorming season with Huddersfield in the early 2010s. |
| Paul Mullin | Cambridge United | League Two | 2020/21 | 32 | Paul Mullin holds the record for the most goals scored in a League Two season as he netted 32 times for Cambridge United in the 2020/21 season, earning him his famous move to Wrexham. |
| Ivan Toney | Brentford | Championship | 2020/21 | 31 | England international Toney’s most prolific season came in 2020/21 as he fired Brentford to promotion. |
| Ricky Lambert | Southampton | League One | 2009/10 | 31 | A striker who went on to score prolifically in the Premier League later in his career, Lambert scored 31 times for the Saints in 2009/10. |
| Jonson Clarke-Harris | Peterborough | League One | 2020/21 | 31 | Another prolific scorer during the Covid-affected seasons, Clarke Harris led Peterborough to promotion in 20/21. |
| Tom Pope | Port Vale | League Two | 2012/13 | 31 | Tom Pope scored a very impressive 31 goals in 46 league games as Port Vale secured promotion from the fourth tier in 2013. |
| Glenn Murray | Crystal Palace | Championship | 2012/13 | 30 | In the same season that Pope was dominating League Two, Glenn Murray was dominating the Championship with Crystal Palace. |
| Billy Sharp | Scunthorpe United | League One | 2006/07 | 30 | A young Billy Sharp backed up an impressive start to his career by hitting 30 goals in his third proper season in men’s football with Scunthorpe. |
| Billy Sharp | Sheffield United | League One | 2016/17 | 30 | It is a testament to Sharp’s ability and longevity that he is on this list twice, ten years apart. He scored 30 times for Sheffield United as they ended a lenghty period in the third tier. |
Teams With Highest Goals In A Single EFL Season
Fulham 2021/22: 106 goals (Championship) – It was not only Mitrovic who was prolific in 21/22, but the entire Fulham team, including players like Tom Cairney and Bobby Decordova-Reid. They scored 106 times as the Cottagers were promoted.
Peterborough United 2010/11: 106 goals (League One) – After being relegated from the Championship the previous season, the Posh arrived in the third tier looking for vengeance. They smashed 106 goals past their opponents over the course of the season, with Craig Mackail-Smith as their top goalscorer.
Ipswich Town 2022/23: 101 goals (League One) – Kieran McKenna’s Ipswich Town side scored 101 goals in the third tier on their way to promotion in 22/23. But, they finished three points off the title.
MK Dons 2014/15: 101 goals (League One) – The Tractor Boys equalled MK Dons’ record from the 2014/15 season in 22/23. Interestingly, MK Dons did not win the title either, finishing eight points away from Bristol City.
Reading 2005/06: 99 goals (Championship) – No team in the history of the second tier has won more points than Reading did in 2005/6. The Royals came agonisingly close to breaking the 100-goal barrier, but ultimately just fell short.
AFC Bournemouth 2014/15: 98 goals (Championship) – Eddie Howe’s men completed their miraculous rise through the EFL in fine goalscoring fashion. The likes of Callum Wilson and Matt Ritchie combined to see the Cherries score a whopping 98 goals.
Bristol City 2014/15: 96 goals (League One) – The team that beat MK Dons to the title in 14/15 were Bristol City, who themselves scored a very impressive 96 goals and accumulated 99 points. They put six goals past Bradford City and scored a whopping eight times against Walsall.
Stockport County 2023/24: 96 goals (League Two) – Dave Challinor’s men scored 96 goals on their way to the league title in 23/24. Their attack was spearheaded by the duo of Isaac Olaofe and Paddy Madden, with the likes of Louie Barry and Kyle Wooton chipping in with a few goals as well.
Notts County 2009/10: 96 goals (League Two) – Just the second time a League Two side appears on this list, Notts County bagged 96 goals on their way to the League Two title in 2009/10. Lee Hughes scored 30 league goals for the Magpies.
Leeds United 2024/25: 95 goals (Championship) – Daniel Farke and co. came into the season under a lot of pressure having failed to instantly win promotion back to the Premier League. But, the Yorkshiremen delivered some of the best attacking football ever seen at Elland Road and ended the season with 95 goals.
Notable Players And Their Impact On EFL Records
There is one undeniable icon of EFL goalscoring, Billy Sharp. The now 39-year-old is the only player to appear on the top 10 scorers list in two separate divisions. The Englishman has scored a whopping 130 goals in the Championship, the most of any player since 2004/05, at a very good rate of 206 minutes per goal. He has also scored 104 times in League One for Scunthorpe and Sheffield United, with his two most prolific seasons in English football coming in the third tier. The striker is looking to add to this tally next season, as he recently signed a one-year contract extension at Doncaster Rovers, who have just been promoted into the third tier.
The second-highest scorer in the history of the Championship is Jordan Rhodes. The former Scotland international scored 123 times in 381 appearances in the second tier. He was at his goalscoring best in the first half of the 2010s and his best years in the Championship came with Blackburn Rovers. The 35-year-old has also scored an impressive 86 goals in the third tier, most of which came early in his career, and he is just three goals away from breaking into the top 10. Unfortunately, he was released by Blackpool at the end of the 24/25 season and it remains to be seen if he can secure a move to a third-tier club next season.
Aleksander Mitrovic has by far the best goals per minute of any player to have played in the second tier since 2004. The Serbian’s 85 Championship goals came on average once every 117 minutes. This was largely due to his spectacular 21/22 season when his 43 goals came every 89 minutes, i.e. better than once per game. The former Fulham striker shattered Ivan Toney’s previous record of the most goals in a Championship season, beating it with 14 games to play.
League One’s top scorer of all time is Ian Henderson. He is a striker who was never extremely prolific but always scored a good number of goals and has not let old age define him. He scored 122 times in 398 League One appearances, meaning he scores a goal every 254 minutes on average. The Rochdale legend has also amassed 45 goals in League Two but he has dropped into the National League with the Dale over the past two years, though he has continued to play, and score, prolifically despite being 40 years of age.
The top scorer in the fourth tier, since it was rebranded in 2004, is Marc Richards, who scored 137 goals in 370 games at an average of a goal every 200 minutes. Richards, who dropped out of the EFL in 2020 and has since retired from football altogether, is another player like Henderson who had a solid goalscoring record for a long period of time, but never managed to have a 25 or 30-goal season. In fact, the Wolverhampton-born man never managed to reach the 20-goal mark in league football. His best season came in 2009/10 when he scored 19 times for Port Vale.
A number of other players deserve a mention in this section:
- Tom Ince and Kevin Ellison are the only non-strikers to be in the top 10 scorers for any league.
- David Nugent is the Championship’s third-highest scorer of all time, though he did not play much in the EFL’s other divisions.
- Adam Le Fondre scored 102 goals in League Two and 49 goals in the Championship.
- Ian Henderson’s League One goalscoring record is under threat from Jonson Clarke-Harris who needs just nine goals to usurp Henderson and is just 30 years of age.
- Adebayo Akinfenwa and Will Grigg, who both had large reputation boosts after going viral on the internet, were also excellent players. Akinfenwa is the fourth-highest scorer in League Two and Grigg is the second-highest scorer in League One.
Comparisons: EFL vs Premier League Goalscoring
There are a number of players who scored prolifically in the EFL, particularly in the Championship, but were not quite able to recreate this goalscoring form in the Premier League.
Lewis Grabban is the Championship’s sixth-highest goalscorer of all time, but he netted just once in 24 Premier League appearances. The London-born man was given a chance at both Norwich and Bournemouth, but he failed to even find the net in the top tier with Bournemouth despite playing under a manager and with a team that he had thrived with previously.
Despite being a winger, Tom Ince is the 10th-highest scorer in the Championship. His most prolific season came in 2012/13 when he netted 18 times in 44 league appearances for Blackpool. He was given opportunities in England’s top flight by Crystal Palace and Hull City between 2013 and 2015 and by Huddersfield in 2017/18, but the Englishman only found the back of the net three times in 48 games.
Danny Graham scored 83 goals in 248 games at an average of a goal every 213 minutes in the second tier, but he too failed in the Premier League. The former England under-20 international actually started his top-flight career in very solid fashion, scoring 12 times in 36 appearances for Swansea. However, the next few years saw him score a dismal six goals in 88 appearances for the likes of Sunderland and Hull.
Dwight Gayle is probably one of the first names that comes to mind when a football fan is asked this question. The London-born man had a couple of outstanding seasons in the championship for Newcastle and West Brom as his Championship career ended with 62 goals in 145 games. In the exact same number of games in the Premier League, he scored just 26 goals, never reaching double figures in a single season and scoring over five goals just once.
The final player in this section is Matej Vydra. The Czech had two good seasons in the Championship with Watford, either side of a poor season in the Premier League with West Brom, and a good season in the second tier with Derby. He scored 65 goals in 187 games in the second tier but managed to find the back of the net just 11 times in 106 Premier League appearances. Many of these came with Burnley, as Sean Dyche showed great faith in him due to Burnley’s small budget and the amount they spent signing Vydra in the first place.
Differences In Goalscoring Between Leagues
Is there a big difference in goalscoring numbers between the different leagues in the EFL?
Over the last five seasons, where data is available, there has been an average of 1341.8 goals in League Two, 1390.8 goals in League One and 1366.8 goals in the Championship.
League Two
| Season | Goals Scored | Goals Per Game |
| 2023/24 | 1645 | 2.98 |
| 2022/23 | 1294 | 2.34 |
| 2021/22 | 1359 | 2.46 |
| 2020/21 | 1303 | 2.36 |
| 2019/20 | 1108 | 2.52 |
League One
| Season | Goals Scored | Goals Per Game |
| 2024/25 | 1427 | 2.59 |
| 2023/24 | 1177 | 2.13 |
| 2022/23 | 1414 | 2.56 |
| 2021/22 | 1489 | 2.70 |
| 2020/21 | 1447 | 2.62 |
Championship
| Season | Goals Scored | Goals Per Game |
| 2024/25 | 1353 | 2.45 |
| 2023/24 | 1480 | 2.68 |
| 2022/23 | 1342 | 2.43 |
| 2021/22 | 1385 | 2.51 |
| 2020/21 | 1274 | 2.31 |
Historical Records and Their Modern-Day Relevance
Evolution Of Goalscoring Across Decades in EFL
Championship
| Season | Goals Scored | Goals Per Game |
| Recent 5-year average |
1366.8 |
2.47 |
| 2011/12 | 1419 | 2.57 |
| 2001/02 | 1485 | 2.69 |
| 1991/92 | 1418 | 2.57 |
| 1981/82 | 1171 | 2.53 |
League One
| Season | Goals Scored | Goals Per Game |
| Recent 5-year average |
1390.8 |
2.52 |
| 2011/12 | 1489 | 2.70 |
| 2001/02 | 1472 | 2.67 |
| 1991/92 | 1435 | 2.60 |
| 1981/82 | 1422 | 2.58 |
League Two
| Season | Goals Scored | Goals Per Game |
| 5-year average |
1341.8 |
2.43 |
| 2011/12 | 1458 | 2.64 |
| 2001/02 | 1397 | 2.53 |
| 1991/92 | 1247 | 2.70 |
| 1981/82 | 1512 | 2.74 |
Analysing Scoring Patterns and Frequencies
We have already looked at how goalscoring differs between leagues, but how has goalscoring changed over time?
In the Championship there has been relatively minimal variation overall between recent years and 1981/82. A difference of 0.06 goals per game equates to just 33.12 goals over a traditional 46-game season (the 81/82 Second Division comprised 22 teams, hence why the total number of goals is lower). Within the time period, there has been more significant variation as, in 2001/02, there were 0.22 goals per game more on average. Strangely, the 2011/12 and 1991/2 seasons had a nearly identical number of goals.
League One has seen a similar goalscoring trend to the Championship over the entire time period, with a difference of just 0.08 goals per game over the 40-year timespan. Interestingly, the spike in goals that was experienced at the turn of the century seems to have been slightly more sustained in the third tier, as its highest-scoring season game in 2011/12.
League Two does not follow the same trend as the Championship and League One, perhaps reflecting the increasing professionalism of the fourth tier. The teams at the bottom of the fourth division have become much more competitive and much more well-run off the pitch. Additionally, the spike in attendance in lower league football and ever-valuable TV deals have given League Two teams more revenue than ever before, meaning they are able to hire more coaches and more skilled coaches, decreasing the skill gap between teams.
By the Numbers: Statistical Breakdown of Top Seasons
Top Nationalities Represented in EFL Goal-Scoring Charts
This section will look at the highest-scoring foreign players in each of the three EFL leagues.
To make the Championship’s list slightly more interesting, it will only include players from outside of the British Isles and those who were born in England but represent a different country in international football (i.e. Albert Adomah) are also ineligible.
Championship
| Player Name | Nationality/National Team Declared For | Goals |
| Nahki Wells | Bermuda | 111 |
| Aleksander Mitrovic | Serbia | 85 |
| Chris Wood | New Zealand | 78 |
| Britt Assombalonga | DR Congo | 77 |
| Andreas Weimann | Austria | 74 |
| Joel Piroe | Netherlands | 73 |
| Lucas Joao | Angola | 71 |
| Teemu Pukki | Finland | 65 |
| Matej Vydra | Czech Republic | 65 |
| Yann Kermorgant | France | 65 |
League One
| Player Name | Nationality/National Team Declared For | Goals |
| Will Grigg | Northern Ireland | 116 |
| Jonson Clarke-Harris | Jamaica | 114 |
| Paddy Madden | Republic of Ireland | 112 |
| Jermaine Beckford | Jamaica | 101 |
| Simon Cox | Republic of Ireland | 90 |
| Jordan Rhodes | Scotland | 86 |
| Brett Pitman | Jersey | 83 |
| James Collins | Republic of Ireland | 80 |
| Dion Charles | Northern Ireland | 72 |
| Lucas Akins | Grenada | 67 |
League Two
| Player Name | Nationality | Goals |
| Billy Kee | Northern Ireland | 114 |
| Jamille Matt | Jamaica | 98 |
| Padraig Amond | Republic of Ireland | 93 |
| James Collins | Republic of Ireland | 90 |
| Barry Corr | Republic of Ireland | 72 |
| Eoin Doyle | Republic of Ireland | 57 |
| Ben Davies | Wales | 57 |
| Jordan Bowery | St. Kitts and Nevis | 56 |
| Clayton Donaldson | Jamaica | 49 |
| Brett Pitman | Jersey | 47 |
FAQ: Common Questions About EFL Scoring Records
Q: Who holds the record for most goals scored in a single EFL season?
A: Since 2004, Aleksander Mitrovic – he scored 43 times for Fulham in the 2021/22 season.
Q: Which EFL team has scored the most goals in a single season?
A: Fulham scored 106 goals in the Championship during the 2021/22 season as did Peterborough in League One in 2010/11
Q: Who is the Championship’s all-time top scorer?
A: The Championship’s all-time top scorer is Billy Sharp with 130 goals
Q: Who is League One’s all-time top scorer?
A: League One’s all-time top scorer is Ian Henderson with 122 goals
Q: Who is League Two’s all-time top scorer?
A: League Two’s all-time top scorer is Marc Richards with 137 goals
Q: How have goalscoring trends changed over time?
A: The main league which has seen change is League Two, which has seen the number of goals per season consistently decrease since the 1981/82 season. Interestingly, the increased amount of added time and increased number of substitutes permitted in the EFL has not had a major impact over the last few years. If VAR is ever brought to the lower levels of English football, that will surely have a detrimental impact.
