Few clubs have produced as many elite strikers as Arsenal. From the clinical finishing of Thierry Henry to the unlikely redemption arc of Robin van Persie and the electric pace of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, the Gunners have given Premier League football some of its most lethal goalscorers.
Each season, debate rages among fans and those deep in Premier League betting markets about who will claim the game’s most coveted individual prize. These three men didn’t just feature in those conversations — they won. Here, we look back at the Arsenal strikers who cemented their legacies by finishing as the division’s top scorers, the golden boot contenders who ultimately stood alone at the summit.
Thierry Henry
When it comes to Premier League strikers, the conversation almost always begins with Thierry Henry. The Frenchman didn’t just win the Golden Boot — he made it his own, claiming the award four times during his time at Arsenal: in 2002, 2004, 2005 and 2006.
Henry arrived at Arsenal in 1999 from Juventus, where he had largely been deployed as a winger. Under Arsene Wenger’s guidance, he was transformed into one of the most complete centre-forwards the game has ever seen. His combination of pace, technique, vision and finishing made him virtually unplayable at his peak, and the numbers he produced across eight seasons at Highbury were extraordinary.
His finest campaign came during Arsenal’s Invincibles season of 2003/04, when he scored 30 league goals and provided 20 assists — numbers that would be remarkable even by modern standards. He was the heartbeat of a side that went unbeaten for 38 matches, and his individual brilliance was inseparable from the collective achievement.
Henry’s 2005/06 season was in some ways equally impressive, given the squad had begun to be dismantled around him. He still managed 27 league goals, a testament to his ability to carry a team when those around him were not at the same level. By the time he left for Barcelona in 2007, Henry had scored 174 Premier League goals for Arsenal — a club record that stood for years.
He remains the benchmark for any striker who pulls on the red and white of Arsenal.
Robin van Persie
Robin van Persie’s Golden Boot season in 2011/12 is one of the more bittersweet chapters in Arsenal’s recent history. The Dutchman was at the absolute peak of his powers, scoring 30 goals in all competitions and claiming the Premier League’s top scorer award with 30 league goals. He was, without question, the best player in England that season.
Van Persie had spent much of his Arsenal career in the shadow of inconsistency and injury. Signed as a teenager in 2004, it took years for him to fulfil the potential that had made him such a coveted talent in European football.
By 2011, everything had clicked. His movement, his left foot, his reading of the game — it all came together in a season of sustained excellence that dragged Arsenal to third place almost single-handedly.
What made his achievement all the more complicated was what followed. That summer, van Persie handed in a transfer request and moved to Manchester United. In his first season at Old Trafford, he scored 26 Premier League goals and fired United to the title, winning the championship that had eluded him at Arsenal. For the Gunners faithful, the sight of their former talisman lifting the trophy in red was a painful one.
His Golden Boot remains a reminder of what might have been — a season that showed van Persie’s ceiling, but ultimately came to symbolise the wider frustrations of Arsenal’s trophy drought during that era.
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang’s Golden Boot in 2018/19 arrived in unusual circumstances: he shared it. The Gabonese striker finished the season with 22 league goals, level with Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mane, meaning the award was split three ways for the first time in Premier League history.
Aubameyang had joined Arsenal from Borussia Dortmund in January 2018, and it quickly became clear that the Gunners had secured one of Europe’s most prolific strikers. His pace was frightening, his movement intelligent, and his finishing composed under pressure. In a side that was transitioning under first Arsène Wenger and then Unai Emery, he provided a reliable source of goals that masked deeper structural problems.
His 2018/19 campaign was one of consistent excellence. He scored in a variety of ways — tap-ins, solo efforts, penalties — and demonstrated the kind of versatility that allowed Arsenal to use him across the front line. The shared nature of the award did little to diminish the achievement; 22 goals in a Premier League season places any striker in elite company, and Aubameyang delivered them in a team that often struggled for cohesion.
His time at Arsenal ultimately ended in controversy, stripped of the captaincy in late 2021 and released in early 2022 following a disciplinary breach. His legacy at the club is a complicated one. But for one season at least, he stood among the Premier League’s very best, and his name sits alongside Henry and van Persie in the club’s list of Golden Boot winners.