Ranking the Leeds United greatest wingers of all time is an argument that has been running in Elland Road pubs for the better part of sixty years, and it is one of the few debates where nobody at this club is short of candidates. Leeds have always been a team that attacked down the flanks — from Don Revie’s side of the late 1960s through to Daniel Farke’s Premier League squad — and the men who did it have tended to be the ones supporters remember longest.
This is our ranking of the ten best, judged on quality, impact and what they actually meant to the Whites rather than on appearance counts alone.
10. Daniel James
The current No.7 makes the list on usefulness as much as spectacle. Signed permanently from Manchester United in 2021, the Wales international has been through relegation, the Championship, promotion and now a second successive Premier League season, and he remains the quickest outlet Leeds have. His running without the ball is the thing Farke values most — the threat that stops opposition full-backs stepping forward. You can read more in our full piece on Daniel James at Leeds United.
9. Wilfried Gnonto
Gnonto arrived from FC Zurich in 2022 as a teenager with an Italy cap already in his pocket, and for four seasons he was the player Elland Road wanted on the ball when a game needed unlocking. Low centre of gravity, fearless in a one-v-one and capable of the sort of goal that ends up on a montage. He left for Fiorentina at the start of September 2026, but the memory of him running at Championship defences during the promotion push is not going anywhere.
8. Gordon Strachan
A right-sided player rather than a pure touchline winger, and a captain rather than a luxury, Strachan still belongs in any conversation about attacking play at this club. He joined from Manchester United in 1989 and was the driving force in the side that won promotion and then the First Division title in 1992 — the last league championship Leeds have won. Football Writers’ Footballer of the Year in 1991, and the player who set the standard everyone else in that dressing room had to match.
7. Jack Harrison
Three separate loan spells from Manchester City before the move was made permanent, which tells you how quickly Leeds decided they could not do without him. Harrison was central to Marcelo Bielsa’s promotion season and then to the survival fights that followed, doing the unfashionable work on the left flank that Bielsa’s system demanded — up and down, ninety minutes, every week. His hat-trick at West Ham in January 2022 was the high point. He joined New England Revolution in the summer of 2026.
6. Arthur Graham
Signed from Aberdeen in 1977, the Scottish winger spent six seasons at Elland Road in a difficult period for the club, playing more than 200 games and giving supporters something to enjoy when there was not a great deal else. Direct, two-footed and a genuine goal threat from wide, Graham was good enough that Manchester United came for him in 1983. Ask anyone who watched Leeds in that era and his name comes up quickly.
5. Raphinha
Two seasons, and they were enough. Raphinha arrived from Rennes in the autumn of 2020 as a relative unknown outside France and left for Barcelona in 2022 as a Brazil international and the best player at the club by a distance. In 2021/22 he carried a struggling Leeds side almost single-handedly, reaching double figures in the Premier League and scoring the goals that kept the Whites up on the final day. Few players have done more in less time.
4. Albert Johanneson
The most important name on this list. Johanneson arrived from South Africa in 1961 and became a first-team regular under Revie at a time when Black players in English football faced abuse from the terraces as a matter of routine. He was electric — quick, skilful, a key part of the side that won promotion in 1964 — and in 1965 he became the first Black player to appear in an FA Cup final when Leeds faced Liverpool at Wembley. His story ended sadly, and Leeds have since worked to make sure it is properly remembered.
3. Harry Kewell
At his peak, Kewell was as good as any wide player in Europe. The Australian came through the Leeds academy, broke into the side as a teenager and by the turn of the century was producing football that had the whole continent watching — PFA Young Player of the Year in 2000, and a central figure in the run to the Champions League semi-finals in 2001. He scored around 60 goals from the left flank, which for a winger of that era is a remarkable return. His 2003 move to Liverpool still rankles with some, but the football came first. Our full look at Harry Kewell’s Leeds United career covers the lot.
2. Peter Lorimer
“Hotshot” was more than a winger — he drifted inside, he played in midfield, he did whatever Revie asked — but he did it from the right flank more often than not, and he did it for the best part of two decades. Lorimer remains the club’s all-time leading goalscorer with 238 goals, a record that has stood for fifty years and shows no sign of falling. The shot was the thing: timed at around 90mph, struck early, and hit with an accuracy that had nothing to do with luck. A Leeds man to the end. Read more on Peter Lorimer’s career at Elland Road.
1. Eddie Gray
There was never much doubt. Gray spent his entire playing career at Leeds, from 1965 to 1983, making more than 550 appearances, and on his day he was the most watchable footballer this club has produced. The two goals against Burnley in 1970 — one a chip from an impossible angle, the other a slalom past most of the defence — are the reference points, but it was the FA Cup final of that year that settled the argument. Gray gave Chelsea’s David Webb an afternoon so difficult that it has become part of English football folklore.
Injuries cost him what should have been a longer prime, and he later managed the club twice. But the ranking is about what a player could do with a ball at his feet and a full-back in front of him, and by that measure nobody at Leeds United has come close.
Honourable Mentions
Plenty of good players fell just short. Chris Kamara and Mel Sterland offered width in different eras; Rod Wallace scored from wide areas in the title-winning side; Mark Viduka and Tony Yeboah were central strikers rather than wingers but shaped the same attacking sides. Newer names may yet force their way in — Jean-Matteo Bahoya arrived from Eintracht Frankfurt on deadline day and is still waiting on his Leeds debut.
The Verdict
The top two are Revie’s, and that is not nostalgia — it is a reflection of how good that team was and how central wide play was to it. Kewell is the modern benchmark, Raphinha the most concentrated burst of brilliance, and Johanneson the player whose importance goes well beyond what he did with the ball.
Whether any of the current squad can climb this list is a question for the next few years. For now, the argument stays open — as it should. If you fancy another one, try our ranking of the greatest Leeds United strikers, or see who made our greatest ever XI. For everything happening at Elland Road today, the Yorkshire Evening Post’s Leeds United coverage is the place to look. Marching on together.
