Newcastle are set to sell Bruno Guimaraes to Arsenal for £75M, according to David Ornstein. The 28-year old midfielder will leave (or perhaps has already left) the Magpies preseason training in Spain to travel to London for a medical. Arsenal have long been interested in the Brazilian, and somewhat ironically, have finally agreed the sale after Edu, with all his connections to his homeland, has moved elsewhere.
Arsenal reportedly had an initial bid of £60M rejected and Newcastle had to come off their
significantly higher asking price, per reports, although it feels like a bit of that on the Newcastle side is the club briefing the media with their desired narrative rather than a faithful accounting. Regardless, the two clubs met somewhere in the middle to make a deal, which is how it should go.
From where I sit, it looks more like Arsenal wanted the player, Bruno wanted the move, and Newcastle’s hand was somewhat forced into selling their club captain. It’s not a bad piece of business for them, though. The fee makes him the most expensive midfielder over the age of 26 and is the most a club has paid for a 28-year old since Real Madrid bought Zinedine Zidane for £66M. For what it’s worth, adjusted for inflation, Zidane still cost significantly more (£128M).
On the other hand, the Magpies should be concerned with the string of high-profile departures over the last two summers. Alexander Isak forced a move to Liverpool last summer after an unpleasant, public, and drawn-out saga. This summer, Anthony Gordon was sold to Barcelona for nearly £70M and Sandro Tonali to Tottenham for £100M. Eddie Howe abruptly left the club last week to be replaced by Matthias Jaissle of Al Ahli. That’s a lot of talent they’ll need to replace, and while they’ve gotten good money for players, you lose a fair bit of on-field quality going from a £120M player to two £60M players.
As for Arsenal, we won’t really be able to judge the success / failure of the move until 3 to 5 years down the road. Spending that much on a 28-year old is not without risk, particularly with the physical demands of the Premier League. I’d suggest that it is the riskiest move of Mikel Arteta’s tenure at the club. But if Bruno helps Arsenal to more major trophies, not many will care about the fee, his age, or where the roster stands in a couple seasons.
Well, that last bit is only partially true. Buying Bruno turns the quiet chatter about the age of Arsenal’s midfield engine room into a significant talking point. Declan Rice and Martin Zubimendi are both 27. Bruno Guimaraes is 28. They’ll be (more than) fine for the next two or three seasons, but beyond that, the spine of the team will need a youthful refresh. Hopefully Myles Lewis-Skelly will develop alongside that trio in the next couple of years to ease the transition.
The core of the Arsenal squad is prime- or late-prime aged. It’ll be fascinating to watch how Mikel Arteta and company balance refreshing the roster with competing for trophies and manage the overall age of the squad. The Gunners had the youngest average age squad in ‘22-’23. They were in the middle of the pack last season. Adding a 28-year old midfielder, who is closer to 29, will move that number in the “wrong” direction (although he’s 28 until he’s 29, that’s how it works). I guess that’s what Max Dowman and Marli Salmon are for, along with signing Christos Tzolis (24), Piero Hincapie (24), Noni Madueke (24), and Cristhian Mosquera (21) recently.
Back to Bruno. I don’t want to sound too pessimistic about the move because I’m not. He’s an excellent player, one of the best midfielders in the Premier League. Last summer’s additions of players like Madueke and Gyokeres improved the squad depth. Buying Bruno raises the ceiling. The Brazilian makes the “starting” lineup better immediately. I say “starting” because, as mentioned, Arsenal have Declan Rice and Martin Zubimendi in the middle of the park. I’m not sure we’ll often see the three of them starting together, if everybody is healthy.
Adding Bruno makes Arsenal better simply by shifting minutes away from Zubimendi and Rice. Zubi hit his “most minutes played in a season” mark in, like, March, clearly ran out of gas, and (rightfully) lost his starting place. Declan Rice has been playing through approximately 17 different injuries and we’ve all been terrified that he’s going to break for months. At the risk of oversimplifying things, the Premier League title race got close in large part because Arsenal ran low on fuel and the Gunners couldn’t get a 1-0 lead over the line against PSG because the French side were far fresher.
Last season, Bruno made 29 Premier League appearances and played close to 2,500 minutes, down from his previous two seasons in which he played 3,200 minutes and appeared in almost every league match. For comparison, Declan Rice eclipsed the 3,000-minute mark last year and Martin Zubimendi nearly did. Simply on how many minutes there are to go around, they’re all going to play less this season. And that’s a good thing.
I’d add another name to the list: Martin Ødegaard. Arsenal do not have another player on the roster who does the things the skipper does, as we’ve been painstakingly reminded to our chagrin with MØ missing so much time over the last two seasons. Bruno does a fair few of those things.
So what does Bruno Guimaraes do? Exactly what Arsenal need. Bruno is a line-breaking passer. Per Gradient Sports, his 6.97 line-breaking passers per 90 places him well ahead of Zubimendi (4.25) and Rice (3.62) and his 29 completed line-breaking passes were the most of any Premier League central midfielder last season. He takes risks. He looks for dangerous passes to create threat and tries to dribble out of tight situations to break down the opposing team. He shoots. Much more than Rice and Zubimendi and a bit more than Ødegaard. He wins free kicks. He’s been among the most fouled players in the Premier League over the last few seasons, which is an even more valuable trait to the best dead ball side in the world. And he presses. His high-defensive action numbers rival those of Mikel Merino and MØ. And then there are the intangibles. He works incredibly hard. He’s a leader.
I’d suggest there is a bit of a misconception about the player Bruno actually is, created by his fiercely competitive, combative attitude playing for a physical Newcastle side. People think of him as a destroyer (which, fair). But he’s a skilled, technical player too. He assisted four of Brazil’s ten goals at the World Cup and has reached double-digit Premier League goal involvements each of the last three seasons.
Like most Arteta signings, Bruno is a flexible player. He’s part-Ødegaard, part-Rice, and part his own thing. He enables new combinations of players in the middle of the field, will create new attacking patterns, and makes the team / tactics harder to predict (and therefore defend). He can be the progressive passer Declan Rice needs playing alongside him. He can be the creative passer higher up the pitch when Ødegaard isn’t on the field. He can do some of the maverick things Declan Rice to give Arsenal’s workhorse a rest, although Bruno isn’t as athletic. He also ensures that Myles Lewis-Skelly doesn’t have to be brought along too quickly in the middle of the field out of necessity to rest Rice and Zubimendi (although MLS has shown himself capable of carrying the load).
For my money, adding Bruno is an excellent indicator that Mikel Arteta is aware of his side’s shortcomings and looking to correct them. Fixing those issues will require a bit of change from the Arsenal manager, too. Part of taking more risks at the attacking end of the pitch, chances that Bruno definitely takes, is accepting that you’re going to lose the ball more frequently.
The question then becomes how do you deal with that, and I think the answer is twofold. The first part and most important part is to trust your players to do what they’re good at doing. Let them cook, so to speak. Arsenal had the best defense in the Premier League. Havertz, Ødegaard, Merino, and others will hunt the ball down. Declan Rice and Martin Zubimendi will read the play to break things up. The defenders will win their 1-v-1 duels. And when all else fails, David Raya will probably bail you out.
The second part is to work with Bruno to better pick his spots. That’s not to say he isn’t already good at that, but he’ll need to learn to recognize when his teammates are in good enough position to recover if the risk doesn’t come off. His new teammates will also need to learn, adjust, and anticipate his risk-taking.
When you think of Bruno Guimaraes, you think of his intensity. He plays hard and wears his emotions on his sleeve. Occasionally, the red mist descends over his eyes. He’s a physical player that sometimes flirts with the line of what you can get away with. For my money, he’s crossed that line a handful of times and been fortunate not to have been sent off for it — the elbow to Jorginho’s head a few seasons ago comes immediately to mind. I’d strongly prefer he not pull those sort of stunts in an Arsenal jersey. Both because I’m not sure it’ll be judged the same way with him wearing a red shirt and also because I don’t want to see players from my club smashing opponents in the head or being violent, generally. Arsenal had an excellent discipline record last season (fewest yellow cards, zero red cards), so you can reasonably expect that the manager / locker room will help keep Bruno’s play and emotions from spilling over into “hurting the team” territory.
On a related note, I’ll be very interested to see whether Bruno retains his place among the most fouled players in the Premier League at Arsenal. It’ll be a useful case study in what y’all know is one of my favorite past-times (Ref Watching).
Bruno’s age, the squad profile, and where things stand in a couple years is a “problem” for later, and I can confidently assure you that the folks calling the shots in North London are well aware of it. I reckon they have a plan in place. They took over a roster that needed a complete rebuild and won the Premier League (and nearly the Champions League) five seasons later and almost certainly would have managed it sooner if not for 115 Charges FC. I trust their ability to steer the good ship Arsenal through whatever revamp waters are ahead. And I’ll reiterate, those waters aren’t here yet. We can see them, for sure. But the worst of it can be avoided by being proactive, and I’ve got no reason to believe they won’t be.
Mikel Arteta got his man. Bruno Guimaraes significantly improves the team right now, which is not something you can say about many transfer-available players (a minor, a Junior, if you will, exception notwithstanding). The window to win more trophies is wide open and Arsenal are going for it. That’s awesome and fun.
