Rumours have been swirling around about the future of Bruno Guimaraes, but Eddie Howe wouldn’t be drawn on the subject at his Friday morning press conference, instead using the opportunity to sing the Brazilian’s praises.
This morning Howe was asked if there was an update on whether Bruno was close to singing a new deal at Newcastle, but Howe, as he’s so adept at doing, deflected the question and chose to focus on the player himself, (via The Chronicle): “Not to my knowledge [about a new deal being close], I’ve been preparing for the game. I’m not sure on that one. He’s a very important piece (in our project). When you look at our team, I think he’s a unique player, you’re not going to find too many players like him. The way he receives the ball, his technical delivery under pressure, his eye for a creative pass.”
It’s these ‘unique’ abilities that have played such a huge part in transforming the way Newcastle play. Since his arrival in January last year, Newcastle’s fortunes on the pitch have dramatically turned around. It’s no coincidence either as Newcastle have yet to win a game this season when Bruno hasn’t featured, which should tell you everything about how integral he is to this side.
While rumours around his contract and his future will likely never go away due to the type of player he is, we should all take Eddie Howe’s approach and ignore those stories and focus on the fact that Bruno is a Newcastle United player. Not too long ago we could only dream of having someone of his quality playing for us. Or at least if we did have a player that good, the fear would always be that he’d be sold in the next window as the previous owner chased profits over success.
Bruno has said many times how happy he is at Newcastle
I’m not sure how many times Guimaraes has to tell us how happy he is at Newcastle before we believe it. I guess we’ve just been burned too many times before, now we just find it hard to believe when someone loves us back.
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As Howe said, there aren’t many players like him, but you can bet your house that Dan Ashworth and his scouting network are doing all they can to find one as we head towards the next phase of the project.
Howe will look to build the team around Bruno
That next phase is likely to involve a huge shakeup of the squad. Expect to see many players put up for sale or seeing their contracts run down. On the flip side, this should be an exciting one in terms of recruitment as Newcastle look to build a team capable of competing in all competitions next term.
Bruno will be a huge part of that rebuild and is likely to be the centre point that the team is built around. Him and Sven Botman are the future of this club and will be paramount to any success that comes our way. With the youthful signings being made too, the future is very bright, but the present isn’t bad either with a player like Bruno Guimaraes in the team.