Norwich City’s Borja Sainz voted best player in EFL in FourFourTwo’s annual fan poll – Wycombe Wanderers striker Richard Kone wins League One award, Dan Crowley of MK Dons named best in League Two

Borja Sainz
Borja Sainz has been named as the best player in the EFL (Image credit: Norwich City FC)

It’s a tradition that has now been going for 20 years – every season since 2005, FourFourTwo has unveiled a list of the top 50 players in the EFL, and we do it by consulting our readers.

We polled fans of all 72 Football League clubs, asking supporters to identify the top performers in their team’s division, not including players from their own side.

Championship fans submitted a ranked list of their 10 best players, while supporters in Leagues One and Two sent us their favourite five – the tallies were then added up, and a weighting applied to each division, to reveal our half-century.

Norwich City star Borja Sainz wins our vote

Borja Sainz

Borja Sainz (Image credit: Norwich City FC)

Four years ago, an Hispanic winger tore up the Championship for Norwich City and finished second in our annual top 50 countdown, behind Ivan Toney.

In 2025, Borja Sainz has gone one better than Emi Buendia that season: he has been voted by our readers as the EFL player of the year.

Buendia fantasy football

Emi Buendia

Comparisons between Sainz and his Canaries predecessor have been made for some time – at 24, the Spaniard is the exact same age that Buendia was in 2021, when the Argentine netted 15 goals in helping the Canaries to win the Championship title.

Norwich’s current star man had incredibly matched that goal tally by the end of November and still leads the division’s scoring chart – he netted hat-tricks against both Derby County and Plymouth Argyle and also became the first player ever to win successive Championship player of the month awards, in September and October.

“This has been my best year in football,” Sainz said, in an exclusive interview that you can read in the new issue of FourFourTwo magazine, out now.

Richard Kone has been voted as the best player in League One, after a remarkable rise for the Wycombe Wanderers forward.

Richard Kone

Richard Kone won the League One vote (Image credit: Getty Images)

The 21-year-old became a professional footballer only 15 months ago – in the little time since joining Wycombe from Athletic Newham in the ninth tier of English football, he’s topped the League One scoring chart with 18 goals this season, driven the Chairboys to a surprise automatic promotion tilt and reportedly attracted a £7m bid from his former boss, Matt Bloomfield, at Luton.

Dan Crowley has been voted as the best player in League Two, after his fine form in midfield for Notts County and MK Dons this season – the former Arsenal youngster started the campaign at Meadow Lane, before switching clubs for an undisclosed fee during the January transfer window.

You can see our full list of the top 50 players in the EFL in FourFourTwo magazine, on sale now.

Chris Flanagan
Senior Staff Writer

Chris joined FourFourTwo in 2015 and has reported from 20 countries, in places as varied as Jerusalem and the Arctic Circle. He's interviewed Pele, Zlatan and Santa Claus (it's a long story), as well as covering the World Cup, Euro 2020 and the Clasico. He previously spent 10 years as a newspaper journalist, and completed the 92 in 2017.