(Football news) The highly rated Brazilian Bruno Guimarães is all set to become Newcastle United’s third signing this January transfer window as the Saudi owners are making a statement of intent to stay in the Premier League. Newcastle and Lyon have reached an agreement for Bruno Guimarães as the fee for the defensive midfielder will be €40m (£33.3m) plus €8m (£6.7m) in bonuses. Guimarães will undergo a medical when he returns to Brazil from Ecuador as he is with the national team playing a World Cup qualifier. Arsenal and Juventus scouted him extensively as they had hoped to buy Guimarães at the end of the season but Newcastle jumped the queue and completed an extraordinary deal. The player had joined Lyon in January 2020 from the Brazilian club Atletico Paranaense and since then has been undroppable from the Lyon starting eleven. 

Newcastle desperately need a defensive midfielder and it has been their main priority for the last three transfer windows, they tried for Boubakary Soumaré last January and also attempted to get Hamza Choudhury on loan before the start of the season. The team would actually benefit from a proper No 6 who can break the play from deep and also help link up play, something that they have lacked by not having a player like that for some time. Guimaraes has been on the radar of Newcastle for a long time but until the takeover the club never thought they could get him. Guimaraes is also capped three times by Brazil, and has been Lyon’s first-choice defensive midfielder this season, lining up alongside Maxence Caqueret in front of a four but more recently with a three-man defense.

Lyon are having a strange season as they have drawn six straight games in December and January and currently sit 10th in Ligue 1, but one thing constant is that Guimarães has been one of their standout players for them. He averages the most tackles per game of any Lyon player (2.4), he has played the most key passes (1.7 per game) and also boasts the joint-most assists (three) with Lucas Paqueta in a below par season for Lyon. Guimarães is also joint-seventh for most tackles in Ligue 1 and 10th for most passes completed, comfortably making him Lyon’s best passer in the team given his nearest teammate is Emerson Palmieri down in 40th place.

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Eddie Howe will hope that a midfield trio of Joeliton, Jonjo Shevely and Bruno Guimarães will provide the much needed midfield stability that his team is lacking. The main priority for the Newcastle owners is to firstly keep the club in the Premier League and then build a team to challenge for Europe. The players that have arrived this winter transfer window has certainly given them the added boost to survive and also build for the future, a player like Guimaraes who was tracked by the likes of Arsenal and Juventus is a massive coup for the Eddie Howe and Newcastle fans. At the age of 24, Guimaraes is already an established player and can become a mainstay in the team in the future.