1 hour ago
8
Is it the end of the road for Bruno Guimarães and Newcastle or are they destined to share at least one more adventure?
With Arsenal anxious to add Eddie Howe’s Brazil midfielder to their armoury and Guimarães receptive to such advances, it remains hard to predict whether Newcastle’s intransigent resistance will be broken.
Perhaps the biggest surprise is that Guimarães has stayed on Tyneside for so long. If his £35m arrival from Lyon in January 2022 offered proof of a then relegation-threatened Newcastle’s new pulling power under their freshly installed Saudi Arabian owners, not everyone expected Guimarães to stick around for that long.
There is an argument that, if Newcastle had cashed in earlier, they might be in a considerably stronger position. Maybe, just maybe, their biggest mistake has been holding on to a crowd favourite adored by Howe for too long.
To understand why, it is necessary to rewind to October 2023 when the club’s then sporting director, Dan Ashworth, gave Guimarães a new five-year contract complete with a temporary £100m release clause.
Few could have predicted that Newcastle’s current captain would outstay Ashworth – who was swiftly en route to an ill-starred stint at Manchester United – but, with hindsight, a clause that expired on 30 June 2024 proved blessing and curse.
To the considerable surprise of some at Newcastle there were no offers for Guimarães and they found themselves desperate to raise cash before that summer’s deadline for meeting Premier League spending rules. Failure to do so dictated a potential 10-point deduction would beckon.
On 30 June 2024 they duly sold Yankuba Minteh – a promising winger and £5m Ashworth recruit – to Brighton for £30m and Elliot Anderson, an exceptionally talented homegrown midfielder, to Nottingham Forest for £35m.
Given that Anderson is now an England international and has just joined Manchester City for a record £116m it proved a terrible deal, particularly as Newcastle neglected to negotiate a sell-on clause with Forest and were forced to sign Odysseas Vlachodimos, a goalkeeper unwanted by Howe, in part exchange.
A club then operating without a sporting director had been expertly pickpocketed by Ross Wilson, Forest’s chief football officer. Now Wilson is Ashworth’s latest successor at St James’ Park – his predecessor, Paul Mitchell, lasted less than year after losing a civil war with Howe – and has presided over the sales of Anthony Gordon and Sandro Tonali to Barcelona and Tottenham respectively for a total approaching £200m.
Given that Newcastle’s steadily increasing commercial revenue is comfortably outstripped by traditional “top six” clubs, such sales were, realistically, unavoidable. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund may be absurdly rich but, under football’s regulatory regime, its spending power is restricted.
If those spending rules rather undermine the boast of David Hopkinson, Newcastle’s Canadian chief executive, that they will be “part of the conversation” regarding the identity of the world’s best club by 2030, they also prompt another question: even if PIF was able to buy any player it wanted would it really invest heavily in Newcastle?
The collateral damage to the Saudi economy sustained during this year’s Middle East war has clearly discouraged expansion, and the ownership mantra was always that the club would be a “sustainable business”.
Nonetheless, fans have become justifiably disillusioned by PIF’s apparent reluctance to speculate to accumulate by building a new training ground and stadium. Or at least expanding St James’ Park.
Although it is understood a state-of-the-art training ground will eventually be built near Newcastle airport, a decision regarding the stadium remains on hold. Even if Riyadh approved the idea, obtaining planning permission for the preferred site, Leazes Park, would not be easy, with potential problems exacerbated by a city council formerly under Labour control having morphed into a minority Liberal Democrat administration supported by the Greens.
after newsletter promotion
The lack of shiny new facilities is understood to have contributed to the disillusionment of Gordon, Tonali and now Guimarães but at least Wilson appears nothing if not dynamic.
This summer he has secured the signatures of three of Europe’s brightest young talents: the midfielder Sean Steur, goalkeeper Ewen Jaouen and the winger Bazoumana Touré from Ajax, Reims and Hoffenheim respectively. Should the Switzerland midfielder Johan Manzambi follow from Freiburg as expected, about £135m will have been invested in a quartet of players aged 20 or under.
Howe is said to be excited by the prospect of coaching signings possessing what he terms “high ceilings” but he knows he is entering a particularly high-risk chapter of his near five-year Tyneside tenure.
In the past year he has lost three of his four highest-calibre players – Alexander Isak (who left for Liverpool for £125m last summer), Tonali and Gordon – in addition to an outstanding dressing room leader in Kieran Trippier.
Should Guimarães go too, the squad will be horribly light on experience. Howe has a deserved reputation for improving players but, to survive, he will need to work his magic on last season’s attacking underachievers, the £69m Nick Woltemade and the £55m Yoane Wissa.
As Newcastle slumped to a 12th-placed Premier League finish Howe’s achievement in twice qualifying for the Champions League in three years and winning the 2025 Carabao Cup were virtually forgotten as he fought for his job.
PIF opted to offer him another chance but an underwhelming start could alter such thinking. The 10 league games before the second international break in November appear critical.
More immediately, Howe will discover whether Guimarães can be persuaded to forget Arsenal in exchange for a contract extension. Much hinges on whether the London club are prepared to pay top dollar – perhaps £75m-plus – for a midfielder who turns 29 this year and precisely how awkward a captain intensely critical of Isak’s behaviour last summer makes things for his manager.
A sliding-door moment approaches.
