AI names the two most overrated players in the EFL Championship right now | OneFootball

The Championship is home to a wide range of players with a wide range of abilities, so FLW have asked ChatGPT who are the most overrated.

The Championship is home to a wide range of players with differing abilities, and from a number of different backgrounds, so FLW have asked AI who are the most overrated.

There are over 600 players in the squads of the 24 teams in the EFL Championship, and they come from a range of backgrounds. From former Premier League and international players such as Conor Coady to those who've just broken through from the non-league game or academies, there's an extremely broad spread of players.

Some arrive in the division with big reputations, but not all of them live up to expectations. So, Football League World have asked ChatGPT which two Championship players are the most overrated. Of course, this is a largely subjective opinion. Whether a player is considered "overrated" or not sometimes even comes down to matters that aren't even within their control. But AI has come up with its answer to this question, arriving at what it described as "two players consistently mentioned as underperforming, relative to expectations."

Ike Ugbo

Ike Ugbo certainly arrived at Sheffield Wednesday in 2024 with high expectations on his shoulders. He'd been capped by England at Under-17 and Under-20 levels, and had impressed on loan abroad from Chelsea, where he'd come through the academy system, scoring 13 in 29 games for Roda JC in the Netherlands and 17 in 34 games for Cercle Brugge in Belgium, before moving permanently to the Belgian club Genk in 2021.

He originally arrived at Hillsborough on loan for the second half of the 2023-24 season, and initially all signs were promising. He scored seven crucial goals in 19 games to help the Owls seal a dramatic Championship survival which became known as "The Great Escape". There was, then, no good reason why Wednesday wouldn't have wanted to make that transfer permanent that summer, so that's exactly what they did, paying £2.5 million to sign him.

But somehow - and despite a season which otherwise upturned expectations - Ugbo's 2024-25 was a bit of a disaster. He made 34 league appearances for the Owls last season but failed to score a single goal or register a single assist, with his only goal coming in the EFL Cup away to Grimsby Town.

It didn't take long for head coach Danny Rohl to lose faith in him. Only 14 of those 2024–25 appearances were starts, and it occasionally felt as though nothing would go right for him. When he was given a penalty kick to take against Millwall at the start of January, he missed it.

Ugbo has had a slightly better start to the new season, and even managed a goal in their EFL Cup win against Bolton Wanderers, though having been replaced by Jamal Lowe with nine minutes to play, he wasn't on the pitch for the penalty shootout which decided the match following a 3-3 draw. He still has time to turn his Sheffield Wednesday move around, but it's absolutely not a surprise that ChatGPT should have listed him as one of the Championship's most overrated players.

Ellis Simms

ChatGPT's second choice as one of the two most overrated players in the Championship is arguably slightly more contentious. Ellis Simms arrived at Coventry City in 2023 from Everton, having spent the previous couple of seasons on loan at Blackpool, Heart of Midlothian and Sunderland, and having paid £3.5 million for him, expectations were fairly high.

Simms' first season at the CBS Arena certainly wasn't a disaster. He scored 19 goals in 53 appearances for the club in all competitions that season, including twice in their FA Cup quarter-final against Wolves, as the club reached the semi-finals of that competition for the first time since they won it in 1987. 13 goals was a reasonable return in the League too, for a team that finished ninth.

Despite Coventry's better overall performance in the League throughout 2024-25, the following season didn't go anything like as well for the striker. The Sky Blues brought in Frank Lampard as their manager in November 2024, but the new man in charge was unable to get anything like as much out of the striker as his predecessor Mark Robins did, and with a £3.5 million price-tag hanging over him, neither the striker nor his new manager could afford a disappointing season. He ended 2024-25 with just seven goals from 46 appearances in all competitions.

Frank Lampard still seems to have a degree of faith in the player, and he's already repaid a sliver of that faith by scoring the winning goal in their EFL Cup win against Luton earlier this month. After the match, Lampard said: “Making good runs and arriving in the box is the starting point and then the technical bit and the finishing is the other bit, but we know with Ellis that he can score goals.”

But the striker has only played 27 minutes of their first two League games of the season, so it's clear that the Coventry manager has less faith in the striker than he did last season, and considering the price that they paid for him when they brought him in, they will have expected more from him last season, as well, regardless of the change of manager.

And opportunities to refocus his time at the club could be getting narrower. In the summer, the Coventry Evening Telegraph had this to say about Simms: "Simms, meanwhile, remains a player who can frustrate, having all the attributes to bully and terrorise defenders with his power and strength, but someone who Lampard admitted he needs to “poke” at times to get the best out of."

That frustration is already keeping Simms out of the first eleven for League matches, and it wouldn't be a surprise to see Lampard move for other attacking options before the transfer window closes at the end of the month. That price-tag seems to be the biggest reason why ChatGPT has put the player on the list, and it's not insignificant that both of the players selected by AI are attackers.

With strikers, there is a clearly definable and very easily measurable aim; to score goals. And if a striker isn't doing that regularly, questions will quickly start to be asked about why this isn't happening. Arriving with a Premier League pedigree - Simms scored once in 12 Premier League appearances for Everton - sets an expectation level that a player has to reach, and has to reach consistently. His goals in his first season for Coventry make Simms a more contentious choice than Ike Ugbo, but his selection by ChatGPT isn't without merit.