Quick thoughts on Guimarães to Arsenal

I didn't believe it at first but there does seem to be real exploration from Arsenal for the Newcastle midfielder

Some big transfer news here breaking today. Arsenal have made bids and/or have talked through intermediaries about the transfer for Newcastle’s Bruno Guimarães. Here is Sami Mokbel in the BBC:

Arsenal are set to make a move for Newcastle United midfielder Bruno Guimarães after holding exploratory talks.

The Gunners have explored approaches for either Guimarães or his club team-mate Sandro Tonali as they look to bolster their midfield.

During discussions aimed at checking the financial conditions of a deal for Guimarães, it is understood a fee of around £60m was initially intimated with the 28-year-old’s representatives.

Arsenal are now poised to make a fresh offer as they remain in talks over a deal for the Brazil international, but it is understood Newcastle have not yet had an official approach.

This is far from the first time that Guimarães has been linked to Arsenal. Before he moved to Newcastle in January 2022, one of the other serious destinations was North London. We also saw the rumors come back two years ago in the summer of 2024 that Arsenal were exploring a move. Here was my stat scouting from that time.

Maybe the third time is the charm?

I was very skeptical of the links this morning, thinking that this was noise from Guimarães agent, using Arsenal as a stalking horse to try and put some pressure on Newcastle for a contract extension (his deal at Newcastle goes through 2028). With multiple reports today, from sources that are actually connected with Arsenal, there seems to be some actual smoke here to this rumor.

At least enough that I want to share my thoughts on the potential move and think about the actual fit.

Let’s start where we always do with some high level graphics about the player.

Guimarães continues to be one of the more well rounded midfielders in the Premier League, offering a solid combination of ball progression and ball winning, with some attacking threat added on top.

The other big positive for him is that he has an excellent track record of production, with his previous Premier League seasons all looking similarly close to each other for total production.

It would be hard to find a better ready made option that you could plug into a Premier League midfield than Guimarães. On top of that, last season he showed off his versatility playing all over the midfield for a Newcastle that was struck by injuries.

It’s hard to fully picture what the plan is here at Arsenal if this move is finalized. He would not be the type of player that I don’t think would be happy with a Christian Nørgaard type role, so it would seem like he would come in to take minutes off of the likes of the other midfielders.

Last season, Arsenal did rely very heavily on Declan Rice and Martín Zubimendi in midfield, with each playing over 4,000 minutes last season. Here is the team minutes distribution for the Premier League plus Champions League.

I have always been a fairly strong believer in, you want your best and most important players playing a lot, but given the demands that the modern game is putting on players, the total minutes load for a player at the pinnacle of the sport is getting pretty crazy.

This is still the type of move that is bigger than just taking some more rotation type minutes off of the incumbents and does, at least to me, signal a fairly large reduced role or even an exit could be in the cards. I just talked how Arsenal are facing that tough decision with Martin Ødegaard today and this is something that could hint at it as well. This could also be Arsenal viewing Zubimendi’s first season as less than a roaring success and with other moves planned trying to add something more to the position.

Like I said, it is hard to see the plan right now without getting a better view of how the rest of the summer could play out.

My view previously saw Guimarães always as more of a 6/8 type midfielder and I could imagine that you could see him successfully step into the role that Zubimendi had last season.

He is a much more progressive passer, and that is the one area that I think that the team struggled with having Zubimendi playing deep, especially during the Ødegaard absences. So if the plan is to move away from the Captain having such a load bearing role in the team and trying to play with a truer “10” or a second striker, having Guimarães partnering Rice on paper looks like a real option here.

I have long talked about that trying to find a player that does similar types of things to Ødegaard is tough, but Guimarães is one of the players that does come the closest here. Looking at their radar charts from last season really shows the similarity here.

This is more of an eye test and gut feel move, but I’d feel more comfortable with Guimarães playing in a double pivot behind a “10” than I would with Ødegaard, even if the overall stats here aren’t all that different. We haven’t really seen that scenario tried, so maybe that is why I am skeptical of it but maybe that would work and save the hassle of bedding in a new player.

That is really the crux of the decision about the transfer. Guimarães isn’t an over the hill ready to retire type player but he also isn’t a spring chicken at 28 (turning 29 in November of the next season). Given that Arsenal already have Rice (27), Zubimendi (27), Ødegaard (27), and Mikel Merino (30), they aren’t hurting for prime age midfielders and experience and probably could use someone a bit younger to start bedding in.

The plus side here is that even with his age, he has been a robust player (if he played for Arsenal perhaps he would be described as potentially ran into the ground). Guimarães has eclipsed 2,400 league minutes in each of the last four seasons, including making 38 and 37 starts in 24/25 and 23/24. He has played over 18,000 minutes since 2019 in his domestic league plus European play. He has been quite good at being available with an injury record that is quite clean.

His worst injury happens to have come last season which isn’t ideal but that has really been the only time he has been sidelined by injury for an extended period.

Final thoughts

Bringing it all together, I would be excited for this deal.

It would depend on the price and how it effected the rest of the summer business and how the squad all fits together to have a final verdict but he’s a damn good player, and I like when Arsenal sign those guys.

Given that I think that Arsenal could sell Ødegaard for something in the £60m to £80m range, I would expect to pay something similar here. Their ages and profiles make them solid comps for each other and I think that they would be looking for contracts in a similar ballpark. Ødegaard might have a bit more of an injury concern that discounts him but not so much to really throw things off here.

I do have a bit of that, “but why?” bouncing around in my head given the current midfield but sometimes at the beginning of the summer it is hard to see the full plan for how the squad will look in September.

If we get more concrete links where this looks like it could happen, we will dig deeper into the stats but for now let’s see how you guys are thinking about this potential deal with poll.