All three tiers of the EFL are wondrous, fantastic places full of rich history, where careers are started, dreams are realised and fulfilled and the public can feel a connection to their clubs in a profound and emotional way, the likes of which have been all but lost in the Premier League.

They’re also home to some fucking awful team crests. Don’t get me wrong, bad crests can be found in the Premier League too – Arsenal’s spits in the face of their history and has the cannon facing the wrong way for copyright issues and the only reason Norwich isn’t on this list is because they gained promotion – but some EFL badges really do take the piss.

In a way, I’ve shot myself in the foot with this bizarrely niche criteria for teams to win a place in this list, since being a bad crest doesn’t necessarily equate to looking like a primary school badge from the most boring place in the UK, but before we start, I’m going to give an honourary mention to every team whose crest is a coat of arms.

Sunderland, Blackpool, Stevenage, Bury, I’m looking at you. And don’t think you’ve gotten out of this, Huddersfield and Bristol City; hiding a coat of arms in a shield doesn’t count as graphic design. I like a coat of arms as much as the next person, but come on, have some imagination.

Anyway, let’s get on to what you came here for…

10. Oldham

A poor, poor badge and I wish it was higher but I made a mistake and included a team that on reflection, I shouldn’t have included. Yes I could edit this or even not write that part that I haven’t even gotten to yet, but I’m a man of my word and my word is final… even if it is wrong.

It’s just not good, is it? In the constant Americanisation of [I was going to say Britain, but the entire world] this absolutely looks like a school badge that was founded late enough to be influenced by the US (all of Milton Keynes) and who uninspiringly call their sports teams ‘The Owls’.

I’m pretty sure they’re using the Rockwell font there atop a two-tone blue shield with a random white peak – we all know how mountainous Greater Manchester is – and a pissed off looking owl that looks like it was drawn by someone who had never seen an owl but had had one described to him over the phone.

9. Mansfield

I really like stags – the animals, not the premarital parties – and any time I see one on some kind of design, I’m usually happy about it.

Mansfield’s badge though? Christ. Remember when you could design your own team on EA’s FIFA Creation Centre? You got a load of kit designs, various different faces you could choose for your players and the most generic, inoffensive team crest templates. Fill in the colours, choose a mascot, put your initials in there, etc…

This was done using EA’s now defunct Creation Centre and I refuse to believe otherwise. You just know this badge is on some kid’s polyester blazer as they walk past some filled-in underpass in Buckinghamshire.

8. AFC Wimbledon

I bemoaned the Mansfield badge for being designed on a five-year-old operating system that seemed to be re-skinned NFL game software, but the Dons’ badge was definitely made using Microsoft Word.

Bodge a two-headed eagle that looks just awful on a shield, put what looks like the laziest Tudor rose you’ve ever seen with uneven sized petals on one wing and a single Shreddie on the other and that should do it.

“We’ve not got enough space for the name of the club. Should I resize something?”

“No time. Just stick the name outside the badge.”

“Should we use a nice font?”

“Ariel… no wait! … italic Ariel.”

Honestly I really like AFC Wimbledon as a club and their story is incredible, but that badge is awful. Draw a better eagle and take it out of the shield and it wouldn’t be half bad. There’s a school in Milton Keynes using this badge because they opened up submissions to the students and this was the least offensive one.

7. Swansea

Remember when Swansea had Michu and he played in that kit that, if you squinted hard enough, sort of looked like a late-noughties Real Madrid strip? They had a cool badge then.

It was in celebration something – I can’t remember what – but it was nice. Classy. Dare I say debonaire? I daren’t.

Now they have the most generic badge in the world that looks like the Santander logo on its side next to a calligraphy S in a dangerously blade white circle. Less is more sometimes, but this is just less.

Riverside Primary, Milton Keynes. est. 2003. “Send your kid here so they’re not treading on your toes when you’re doing the hoovering.”

6. Wycombe Wanderers

This is the one that I didn’t mean to put in here. I actually like it a bit. I’m a Wycombe fan myself so I’m almost definitely being biased, but it’s largely alright. There’s a lot I’d change though…

That crown – or whatever it is – doesn’t make sense positionally, the chain at the back seems to be coming from a very suspect area, there should be something on the left and right sides of the navy ring; perhaps a couple of fleur-de-lis.

It does scream private school though. I still regret putting it here.

5. Barnsley

Fucking hell this is the ugliest bade of all time. Two men building a stupid busy coat of arms, looking very antiquated, but thrown into a reasonably modern shield design with what looks like placeholder text. *replace text with semi-decent and interesting font*

Unless you’re Olympiacos, Roma, or Bristol Rovers (pirates are cool), people do not belong in football crests and I defy you to find a single good one. Bournemouth’s is stupid and is based on a particularly important header that about five people remember, that one Leeds tried to press on us was just sad and the old Columbus Crew one was the most misguided attempt at looking cool I have ever seen.

I hate hate hate this badge and it’s not higher because it doesn’t scream Milton Keynes primary school quite as much as it screams Kent primary school.

4. Burton

It’s the fucking letter B kicking a ball imposed over the Arsenal badge that’s had a couple of colours changed.

It’s juvenile, stupid, horribly designed and soulless. That’s Milton Keynes™.

3. MK Dons

The most egregious thing about this abhorrent “crest” is that it tries to trick passers-by into thinking the MK Dons is a club with genuine history and not one that stole everything from a plucky and generally liked team in Wimbledon by using the Roman Numerals MMIV instead of 2004.

It’s a stupid and ugly badge that stole turning the letters of the initials into a shape from Fulham, but in case you’re too thick to understand that the gold shape is an M and a K, they literally just spell it out again in a design that runs down the side, completely clashing and looking like a cigarette brand logo.

I’m not even going to question it. This badge is outside a school in its hometown somewhere and that’s absolutely indicative of a club whose greatest ever achievement was selling a man who dives, fouls and gets his dick sucked on Snapchat professionally for Tottenham fucking Hotspur.

2. Preston

There’s no standing up for this badge. None at all. It’s essentially a nativity scene with a latin motto – ‘Princeps Pacis’ (Prince of Peace) – despicably shortened to PP.

I said that Swansea’s was the most generic badge in the world, but this is the most boring. It’s coma-inducing. Not in the sense that there isn’t a lot going on, because there’s a sheep holding a cross (???), but it’s just fucking lame.

Catholic primary school where the headmaster is rumoured to still have a cane and of course, of course, this is in the beautiful rolling hills of Milton Keynes.

1. Cheltenham

Last and definitely least is Cheltenham’s badge.

I’m certain I played football against a school with this badge when I was ten, but I couldn’t have done because I live nowhere near Milton Keynes.

I can’t actually articulate what makes this badge just so primary school-y, but it’s uncanny. It could be the shield. I wonder whether if it was just the robin it would look more like an insurance company logo, but it has the shield so now whenever I look at this, I can’t help but picture an overworked and underpaid woman who teaches maths, English, science and PE whilst having to deal with a PTA mother who keeps walking around the school carpark with a clipboard, trying to claim she has some sort of stake in the school because she has three children going there and her son always plays Joseph in the nativity play.

It’s that last badge that made me write this article. Every time I came across it when playing as Wycombe on FIFA, working my way up to the Champions League final, I’d get irrationally angry just thinking about having to go to school and even though I had no experience of this, going to said school in Milton Keynes, where imagination and fun has been outlawed, Formula 1 has been turned into a gloried Toyota Prius race and everyone has to buy brown furniture.

That’s the end of the article. I hope you liked it.

Alfie Powell @AlfiePowell