Bruno Guimaraes is the latest name we have to learn how to pronounce

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By Tony Attwood

Bruno Guimarães Rodriguez Moura is the latest name in the journalistic schedule of players who might or might not come to Arsenal.  And to be clear as ever, we have no specific inside information, unlike that which most of the journalists and bloggers claim to have.  We just watch the names come and go.

And actually that coming and going of names is rather annoying for it always seems to me as if the journalists and big-time shouty bloggers are treating us with a spot of contempt, telling us that THIS is the player Arsenal are really going after and then expecting us to have forgotten that in a couple of days as another name comes forward and gets a lot of attention.

And for now that new name is Bruno Guimarães

He is a Brazilian midfielder, is the captain of Brazil and the captain of Newcastle United.     He played over 32 of the league matches in each of the three seasons between 2022/3 and 2024/5 but slipped down to 29 league games in the season just finished.   But interestingly, his goal scoring increased last season as his appearance level dropped – he got nine last season, the largest number of league goals ever in his career.

Newcastle won 14 out of their 38 games last season, scoring 53 and conceding 55 goals.  Guimarães joined Newcastle on a four-and-a-half-year contract in January 2022 for around £40m.  He has regularly been playing in virtually every league game of the season, although he slipped down to 29 games last season.

However, although his game tally fell back, the number of goals increased, and last season he scored nine goals in those 29 games.   He signed his latest contract (for five years) on 7 October 2023 and later became team captain.

Among his many attributes is the amount of ground he covers during matches, which in 2023/4 was said to be more than any other player in the Premier League.  He won the League Cup with Newcastle in 2025 after they beat Liverpool.

As an international, he was eligible, in the odd way these things work, to play for Brazil or Spain, and he chose the former, starting with the 2020 Olympics and the 2022 World Cup, which means if he does sign for Arsenal he is likely to go missing from time to time.    He was in the team that lost to Norway and missed a penalty in that game.  

It is suggested that he is keen to win a trophy before he retires, hence his desire to find a club that is known for achieving such a goal.  And this is where his problem arises.  Newcastle last won the league in 1927, which my calculator says is 100 years ago.  They were runners-up 20 years ago.

Their most recent league trophy was in 2017 when they won the Championship, and their most recent FA Cup win was in 1955, although they did win the League Cup the season before last.   So we can get a clue as to why he might want to move, and he has let it be known that he would like to play for a team that is “competing for silverware every season.”

Arsenal are said to be offering £60m, but Newcastle don’t want to sell having already lost Gordon and Tonali from the squad.  It is being reported that his agent has had a chat with Arsenal, which is what led to Arsenal preparing a bid to put to Newcastle of around £60m.

It is also being suggested on some fronts that Arsenal are getting increasingly concerned about the fitness of Declan Rice and his unwillingness to admit to problems and thus miss games for treatment.   Certainly that appears from the outside to be the case through the internationals, although of course I have no inside information on that.

Meanwhile we now have a broader set of matches representing Arsenal’s August warm-up ahead of the new season.   The Emirites Cup games are of course at the Arsenal stadium, the rest are away.