The Debate: Who is the Championship's greatest ever player?

The standard of the Championship continues to improve year-on-year, with the league attracting big names from all over Europe.

From technically gifted playmakers to prolific centre forwards, we are blessed with an abundance of talent to choose from when it comes to debating the greatest to have stepped foot in the league.

Members of the bet365 News team have tackled the impossible question and answered who they think is the Championship's greatest player.

Adel Taarabt may not carry the same Championship longevity as some other contenders in this debate, but nobody comes close to the truly outrageous talent that the mercurial Moroccan possessed.

Mark Mothershaw

At his best, he was truly world-class, and, believe me, that’s no exaggeration!

Just ask Queens Park Rangers supporters, who were fortunate enough to bear witness to his sublime showing in 2010/11, how revered he was, and still is.

He produced what many perceive to be the greatest individual season in Championship history as the West Londoners, against all the odds, romped to the league title on the back of four successive bottom half finishes.

The esteemed Neil Warnock was at the helm that season and received many of the accolades for turning the Rs' fortunes around, but even he would admit that Taarabt was the true lynchpin to their success.

Always electric and eccentric, the former Tottenham Hotspur man made a mockery of some of the meanest backlines to have graced the second-tier that season.

He chipped in with 19 goals and 21 assists - becoming just the third player in Championship history to exceed 15 goals and assists in a solitary campaign.

He played a hand in over 50 percent of Rangers’ 72 league goals that season, so no wonder he was crowned Championship Player of the Year at the EFL’s lavish end of season awards ceremony.

It wasn’t just the goals and assists that endeared him into the hearts of the QPR faithful however, it was arguably even more so the panache and flair that he brought to the hallowed Loftus Road turf.

From rainbow flicks and obscene nutmegs to panenka penalties, Taarabt possessed an extreme confidence never previously seen at this level of the game.

It was truly, at times, like watching a football freestyler carrying out his duties on one of the grandest professional football stages on the planet.

Others will argue that he had his faults, and yes he did.

While he was a nightmare to manage, as Neil Warnock will attest to, and he may not quite have been the most professional player inside the QPR dressing room, he was certainly the most influential.

In terms of x-factor and entertainment, nobody has done it better in the second-tier than the remarkably flamboyant Adel Taarabt, and likely never will!

As far as consistency and longevity are concerned, nobody can match Peter Whittingham’s body of work in the Championship.

James Wilson

Coming through the youth ranks at both Coventry City and Aston Villa, it was at Cardiff City, who Whittingham joined aged 22 in 2007, where the Nuneaton-born midfielder was able to leave an immortal impact on the English game.

A central midfielder boasting a proverbial wand of a left foot, Whittingham developed into a bona fide talisman for Cardiff in England’s second tier.

Regarded as one of the finest players to have ever pulled on a Cardiff shirt, Whittingham’s technical ability was of a superior level to the Championship – capable of repeated laser-like passing and frequent set-piece brilliance.

Think Frank Lampard but in the Championship.

The 2009/10 season saw Whittingham at his breathtaking best – scooping the Championship Golden Boot award with an outrageous 20 goals and 10 assists from midfield.

This was not even the Englishman’s defining Championship season, with Whittingham a vital figure as Cardiff romped to the league title in 2012/13 to achieve promotion to the Premier League for the first time in over half a decade.

Cardiff’s number seven was named in the PFA Championship Team of the Year in both of these campaigns, along with the 2011/12 season in between.

All in all, Whittingham racked up a total of 82 goals in 399 Championship appearances across 12 seasons.

No central midfielder in Championship history has outscored the Cardiff legend, who stands at number 18 in the competition’s all-time goals standings.

Whittingham did not merely come and go or shine and bright and fast in the Championship, he was one of the division’s outstanding performers over an extended period of time.

Any discussion of greatness warrants an all-encompassing measurement of overall impact, and in the case of the great Peter Whittingham, there wasn’t much he didn’t achieve during his stellar Championship career.

On pure ability, Ruben Neves is the greatest player to grace the Championship, and it’s not even close.

Ellis Statham

Wolves signed the Portuguese midfield maestro from Porto for an undisclosed sum in 2017, believed to be in the region of £15.8 million – a club and league record fee.

Reuniting with former Porto manager, Nuno Espírito Santo, he scored his first goal for the club on 15th August 2017 in a 3–2 away win over Hull City. This was just a sign of what was to come, scoring a further five goals from outside the box in the 2017/18 Championship campaign.

Exceptional when required to dictate from the centre of the park, with a unique ability to find the net from range, avid Championship watchers were witnessing a player with quality that they’d rarely seen before.

The season prior to his arrival, the Wanderers recorded a 15th placed finish, just seven points above the drop-zone. The season of Neves’ entrance, Wolves cruised to a first place finish, winning the league on 99 points - nine clear of second placed Cardiff City.

Transformational.

To give Neves full accreditation for Wolves’ promotion wouldn’t do justice to the job that Nuno Espírito Santo had done, but to suggest that he wasn’t integral to their success would be dishonourable.

He claimed a hat-trick of club awards following the conclusion of the 2017/18 term, walking away with the Player of the Season, Player's Player of the Season and Goal of the Season accolades.

While his stay in the Championship was short, that is a reflection of his quality, needing just a season to inspire a league-winning campaign for a team who were barely creating distance between themselves and the relegation spots just a season prior to his arrival.

We have never seen a player make such an instant impact in the Championship before, nor have we seen a player of his technical ability.

Aleksandar Mitrovic made a mockery of the Championship with one of the greatest individual seasons you will ever see.

Jaquob Crooke

To score 20 goals in a Championship season is a superb individual achievement.

To score 30 goals in a Championship season is a rare feat indicative of an exceptional finisher.

To score 40+ goals in a Championship season… well, that’s just mind-bogglingly outrageous.

Aleksandar Mitrovic scored 43 goals as Fulham were crowned champions of the second tier in 2022, setting a divisional record for a 46-match campaign and overhauling the tally set by Guy Whittingham in 1993.

There were only three opponents he failed to score against in the 2021/22 campaign and Mitrovic netted in 28 of his 44 league appearances, scoring more than once in 12 of those fixtures. Only six were from the penalty spot.

He was averaging a goal every 89.2 minutes – essentially a goal per game – as he mercilessly bludgeoned defences week in, week out.

An individual scoring that many goals in a single season would be considered a freak event but everyone was fully aware that a player of Mitrovic’s calibre was far too good for the Championship.

Two seasons before, he’d netted 26 goals in 40 Championship appearances as Fulham won promotion via the play-offs. Rewind a further two years and having joined the Cottagers on loan, he scored 12 goals in 17 Championship appearances to help thrust Slavisa Jokanovic’s men into automatic promotion reckoning.

That’s 81 goals in 101 matches for Fulham in the second tier. The numbers are quite frankly absurd, and the array of finishes were mesmerising: left foot, right foot, piledrivers, glancing headers.

Beyond his rich currency in goals, Mitrovic’s imposing frame saw him intimidate countless defenders. The archetypal number nine, Marco Silva utilised his physical presence by ensuring the Serbian striker was a key cog in Fulham’s build-up play and Mitrovic thrived with the additional responsibility.

Dominant in the air, forceful on the ground and finishing so exquisitely sweet, Mitrovic was simply a cheat code in the Championship and the most complete forward the second tier will likely ever see.