Keith Downie clears up whether Bruno Guimarães personally informed Newcastle he wanted to leave

There have been many reports over the last few days talking about Bruno Guimarães looking to leave Newcastle United to join Arsenal.

It's a strange story because, as things stand, Arsenal have not even reached out to Newcastle about taking Bruno off their hands this summer.

Despite all the reports of a £55 million bid followed up with a £65 million proposal, Arsenal, the club, has yet to speak to Newcastle. All of those enquiries have come through intermediaries. Agents acting on behalf of Guimarães who are looking to see if there's a deal to be done.

It seems like a super shady way of doing business, but it's just yet another quirk of the modern game.

Keith Downie got some more information on Bruno's wishes

Keith Downie has been dropping updates via YouTube on the situation, and initially, Downie said he didn't know whether or not Bruno Guimarães had directly spoken to anyone at Newcastle United to inform them of his intention to leave.

On Friday, the Sky Sports reporter was able to get clarification on the matter, and it turns out that this is all happening with Bruno's blessing, but he will not down tools to force a move if there's no deal to be done.

"Bruno Guimarães had basically told the club he wanted to leave, and he wanted to go to Arsenal. But I said I didn't know whether he'd done that directly or he'd done that indirectly. My information now is that it was directly. 

"It's actually incredible. Newcastle are flabbergasted that Arsenal have yet to contact them, have yet to make a bid, and all the noise and all the traffic and everything regarding this is all coming through the agents, and of course Bruno now has not just his normal agency, but there's a super agent that's been brought in.  

"Bruno has directly said he would like to pursue that opportunity, but it's only on two grounds. One ground is that  Arsenal make a firm offer of their own. The second is that Newcastle get what he believes to be a good fee for his services, a high fee for his services, not a paltry figure. 

"I think with Bruno, he wants it to be the case that Newcastle really would coin in for him and they would get real top dollar. And then I think it would kind of sit better with him leaving. Also worth noting just now as well, it's probably been wrongly reported by myself and others that it's a financial decision, from what I'm hearing now, that this is a purely football decision from Bruno. He's a very, very high earner at Newcastle United. He is the highest earner; he's on a lot of money, a lot of money by the way. So this is for him a footballing thing. Is he going to get more than that at Arsenal? Yeah, probably. He is probably going to get a bit more than that. Is he gonna get loads more than that? Probably not. But this for him is a footballing decision because he's 29 in a couple of months and he wants to win trophies. He wants to win things."

Can Howe convince Bruno on the new project?

Arsenal are going to have to dig deep into their pockets to get this deal done; there's no doubt about that. Newcastle don't want to sell Guimarães, and his contract runs until 2029, so they hold all the cards here.

With Bruno saying that he's happy to stay if an agreement can't be reached, then that puts more power on Newcastle's side of the table. They will obviously be careful not to be unreasonable. If Bruno gets the impression that Newcastle aren't playing fair, then his attitude may change, so they at least have to be seen to be talking with Arsenal.

However, will Arsenal reach the figures Newcastle will demand? We're not so sure. There's still a good chance he goes, though; we're not naive enough to think that Newcastle won't bend a little bit.

Hopefully, the likes of Eddie Howe and Ross Wilson can sit down with Bruno and go through the new vision of the club and convince him to stay and probably throw a new contract at him too, just to sweeten the deal.