Bruno Guimarães completes £75m Arsenal move: ‘I needed a new challenge’

Bruno Guimarães says he “needed a new challenge in my life” after joining Arsenal from Newcastle for £75m and has targeted trophies in north London.

Guimarães is understood to have signed a four-year contract at the Emirates that contains a further one-year option after Newcastle reluctantly agreed to sell their captain.

The 29-year-old, who captained Newcastle to their first trophy since 1955 when they won the Carabao Cup last year, had made it clear that he wanted to join the Premier League champions after meeting the club’s new manager, Matthias Jaissle, this week.

Arsenal are understood to have previously shown an interest in signing Guimarães on two occasions – firstly in 2020 when he was playing for Athletico Paranaense in Brazil and then 18 months later when he was at the French club Lyon and went on to move to the north east. But the Brazil midfielder has admitted wanting to join Arsenal after his first meeting with their manager Mikel Arerta and sporting director, Andrea Berta.

“Since the first time I spoke to Berta and Mikel, I was excited. I just felt inside of me that I need a new challenge in my life and I think to be an Arsenal player is going to be an exciting challenge in my life,” he told Arsenal’s website. “After playing two World Cups, I’m at the point of my life, I need a challenge like this. I want to win trophies, I want to make history and I think I’m in the right place to do it. I’m so excited to start. We have tough games to play this season, so the squad is going to be very, very important and I’m hopeful we can achieve our dreams.”

The arrival of Guimarães significantly boosts the midfield options available to Arteta, who now has a formidable squad that contains Declan Rice, Martin Ødegaard, Martin Zubimendi, Mikel Merino and Myles Lewis-Skelly.

“We are further strengthening the heart of our team,” said Berta. “As we have all seen, Bruno can play as a defensive midfielder and as a box-to-box player. He combines quality with quantity, and has provided goals and assists for his team every year. Bruno will allow Mikel to further develop our playing style and will also increase our internal competitiveness, which is essential for maintaining the standards required when we are aiming to win major trophies.”

Guimarães revealed that he has already received a message from Rice welcoming him to Arsenal that said “come here and please no more fights, now we’re friends”.

“I was happy he messaged me, but the midfield we have here, in my point of view, is one of the best in Europe,” said Guimarães. “Everyone is an amazing player, I’m so excited to start chatting and play, and know the players very, very well, but we have an amazing midfield.”

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Bruno Guimarães said leaving Tyneside was ‘one of the toughest decisions of my life’. Photograph: David Price/Arsenal FC/Getty Images

Guimarães also released a statement to Newcastle that described leaving as “one of the toughest decisions of my life”. It read: “I fell in love with this place. I really mean that. From my first day, the supporters, my teammates, Eddie and the staff, and everyone connected with the club made me and my family feel at home.

“This is one of the toughest decisions of my life. When I arrived, the club was in a challenging position and I am incredibly proud of what we achieved together. I thank PIF, our chairman Yasir Al-Rumayyan and Jamie Reuben for everything they have done for me and for this football club. I also want to say thank you to David and Ross for the huge respect to me throughout this process. They did everything they could to keep me at Newcastle, and I am very grateful for our time together.”

On Friday, Newcastle’s sporting director Ross Wilson said that they had no option but to allow him to leave. “What we had to weigh up was, very respectfully from Bruno with his behaviour towards us, very emotionally as well, he effectively told us he wanted to leave and move on,” he said.

“That doesn’t mean he can go, but it certainly plays a part in what our thinking is when we hit a certain range of number. There’s no part in saying it was part of our strategy and was in our thinking this summer - it wasn’t. But we have got to be flexible and react to things that happen.”