Some fixtures settle into a rhythm, while some have never produced goals at an even rate. Since 1970 the Arsenal vs Leeds United fixture has served up a 7-0 League Cup win for Arsenal and a 6-1 league win for Leeds. Then, the fixture disappeared for long spells while Leeds were out of the top flight. The scoring record follows the same pattern. A small group of players have taken most of the goals, and one of them scored more than everyone else of his generation put together.
Thierry Henry stands alone
Henry scored 12 goals against Leeds (10 Premier League and two FA Cup), across the 12 times the clubs met during his two spells at Arsenal. He started with one in a 2-0 win at Highbury on 28 December 1999 and added another in the 4-0 at Elland Road the following April. One followed in the 4-1 away win of September 2002, and one in the 3-2 home defeat of May 2003 that handed Manchester United the title.
Seven of the 12 came in 2003-04. Two arrived in the 4-1 win at Elland Road on 1 November 2003, one in the FA Cup third-round tie at the same ground nine weeks later, and four in a single night.
The four-goal night at Highbury
Arsenal beat Leeds 5-0 at Highbury on 16 April 2004, Robert Pires scoring after six minutes and Henry taking the other four. He raced clear to score on 27 minutes, chipped a penalty on 33, then scored twice more after the interval, on 50 and 67.
It was the only four-goal game of his career and the first by an Arsenal player since Ian Wright against Everton in December 1991. His last goal in the fixture was the quietest. Back at Arsenal on a two-month loan from New York Red Bulls, he came off the bench on 68 minutes in the FA Cup third round on 9 January 2012. He scored the only goal 10 minutes later, in front of 59,615.
Ian Wright and the 1990s
Wright is next with seven, five of them in the Premier League. The other two came in the FA Cup fourth-round replay at Elland Road on 3 February 1993, a 3-2 win completed by Alan Smith. He added a late third in the 3-0 at Elland Road in October 1995. Two more came at Highbury on 6 April 1996, the first on 44 minutes and the second in the 90th to settle it 2-1. He added another in the 3-0 at home a year later and one on the opening day of 1997-98.
Before him, Alan Sunderland produced the biggest single haul the fixture has seen, until the figure was overtaken by Henry. He scored a hat-trick in the 7-0 League Cup win at Highbury on 4 September 1979, with Liam Brady converting two penalties and Sammy Nelson and Frank Stapleton taking the others.
What Leeds have managed in reply
Leeds’ most valuable goal in the fixture came from Allan Clarke, whose header on 53 minutes at Wembley on 6 May 1972 won the FA Cup final in front of 100,000 and remains the club’s only FA Cup. The Premier League years were leaner. Ian Harte, Mark Viduka and Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink each managed three, and Viduka’s 89th-minute winner at Highbury on 4 May 2003 did the most damage of any of them.
The scorers of the current era
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang took a hat-trick in the 4-2 at the Emirates Stadium on 14 February 2021. Bukayo Saka has scored in three separate meetings since, in December 2021, October 2022 and August 2025. Gabriel Jesus and Viktor Gyokeres are on three apiece, Gyokeres with two in the 5-0 of August 2025 and one in the 4-0 at Elland Road on 31 January 2026.
That is the shape anyone following Premier League betting on this fixture keeps running into. The goals arrive in clusters rather than a trickle, and usually from one forward having a night of it. 55 years of evidence says the meeting is rarely tight and rarely shared out.
Betting is for over-18s only.
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