Bruno Guimaraes now really pressing his claims – Impressive underlying pointer | OneFootball

Despite being the club’s record signing (£35m plus another £6m+ in add-ons, mainly dependent on Newcastle United avoiding relegation…), Bruno Guimaraes not kicking off because the form of other players had helped ensure he had to wait almost six weeks to start his first Newcastle United match.

Signing from Lyon on 30 January 2022, the Brazil midfield international having to wait 39 days until his first start for Newcastle United.

Bruno Guimaraes had actually helped Newcastle pick up an amazing 13 points in his first five appearances, though only 39 minutes on the pitch in that handful of cameos.

Joelinton’s injury led to a first start for his compatriot at Southampton seven days ago and in truth, Bruno Guimaraes had a varied performance on his first start.

He did some good things and some not so good things, including gifting possession at times, however, no doubts about the prime quality of the Bruno Guimaraes finish to win that game. Dan Burn heading back across goal and a quite superb backheel volley for the boy from Brazil. One local journalist embarrassingly gave Bruno Guimaraes a 10 out of 10 for this performance…hmmm, well I think we will see plenty 10 out of 10 displays in the future from the former Lyon player but his first start most definitely wasn’t one of them.

With that striker at Southampton, it was difficult (impossible?) to believe that this was a player who hadn’t scored a league goal for ten months and indeed in the 26 months since he moved from Brazil to Europe, had only scored in two previous league matches.

The reality is that goals and assists will be a bonus with Bruno Guimaraes.

He made his name with Lyon as the kind of all action midfielder that Newcastle United have been desperate for, for so long. The player that gets around the pitch, breaking up the opposition’s play, connecting his side’s play, leading to him being towards the very top of so many metrics in Ligue 1 as a stand out midfielder.

There was no goal at Chelsea for him but this Bruno Guimaraes performance at Stamford Bridge showed us far more of what he is really about.

As this table from the Other14 (who specialise in stats for clubs other than the ‘big six’) shows:

Great to see that in only his second start for Newcastle United, Bruno Guimaraes really getting in amongst it.

Also, whilst I wouldn’t say in any way that Sean Longstaff has had a good season so far, what he has given when he plays is that willingness and he has the engine, to also get around the pitch and close the opposition down. Maybe no surprise that on Sunday he had one of his better games, as he had the likes of Bruno Guimaraes also alongside him, with the Brazilian and others helping Newcastle to have such a high press that it restricted Chelsea so much. The home side only had three shots on goal late in the game and numerous times gifting possession in dangerous areas to NUFC, as Eddie Howe had his team pushing so high.

I watched the Palace match on Monday and they were excellent against Man City, fully deserving their 0-0 draw. A major part of their success in getting that result was that like Newcastle at Chelsea, they pressed Man City, with Gallagher and Mateta (top two in the table above) key to that, a fair few times winning possession high up the pitch as Guardiola’s players didn’t like being pressurised so often, not what they are used to.

As for Bruno Guimaraes, I think in the weeks to come we will undoubtedly see him featuring highly in these type of tables above, as he gets ever more up to speed and adapts to the Premier League.