RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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He has not kicked a ball for his new club yet but Bruno Guimaraes has already felt the affection that Arsenal supporters have for him. Pausing to offer thanks to the man upstairs, the new signing was greeted by a near-capacity Emirates Stadium on Sunday, crying out, "Bruno! Bruno!" No wonder his face beamed with delight.
What a difference $101 million makes. The 28-year-old was once a bête noire around Arsenal parts. He and his Newcastle United teammates were loathed for the combative spirit they brought on their visits to North London. That will be the first of many qualities Mikel Arteta expects Guimaraes to offer the champions.
"I'm delighted to have him," said the Arsenal manager. "Why? Well, we see very clearly, especially the energy that he brought immediately to the training ground, the hunger, the desire to come here and create a big history at the club.
"That's the ambition that we need. We want to go to the next level and very, very much convinced that we're going to need players with such a personality, desire and character to push everybody inside the organisation to go even higher.
"I think he's proved that [he is a warrior]. I think not many people would question associating him with that word. So we know what he's going to bring to the club."
The man who famously gets very upset when he loses a duel will surely be pleased to have Guimaraes in his ranks. After all, the new signing has won more duels than any player since he made his Premier League debut in February 2022. He also ranks third for pressures applied by a midfielder, trailing only Bruno Fernandes and Morgan Gibbs-White. The volume tells you more about the aggressive way that Guimaraes and Newcastle played, as does the remarkable volume of fouls won at 410, over 100 more than any player in the division. It also speaks to the iron man qualities of the new signing, 14th for minutes played among outfielders during his time in the top flight.
There is a caveat to those impressively energetic numbers, however. In volume terms Guimaraes does great, but by the standards of an Arsenal midfielder there is work to be done in keeping Arteta from getting too upset. A 54.5% duel success rate during his Premier League games for Newcastle is good, a fair stretch above average for midfielders, but notably below the bulk of his new teammates. Last season in particular Guimaraes had just a 50.5% success rate. Both Martin Zubimendi and Declan Rice are nearly 10 percentage points clear of him.
That gap might be reflective of differences between Newcastle's approach and Arsenal's. Arteta's side did not, last season at least, press with great abandon. Nor were they the sort to put the boot in too frequently. It is also true that in the more advanced role Guimaraes played for his club last season, he would often be going into duels where his opponent had more escape routes than they might on the edge of his penalty area. Still, Gradient Sports' analysis of Guimaraes' defensive work delivers a similar conclusion. Thirty-seven of 74 50:50s won is, by definition, absolutely average. A success rate of 32.4% when being dribbled at placed him 48th among 81 qualifying midfielders.
Without the ball, Guimaraes is good certainly, better than average in most facets. That is not what the best defense in Europe is built on. How he fares without the ball might offer an intriguing insight into just how much of Arsenal's defensive quality is built on the right individuals and how much the system. One suspects that with Rice alongside him, Guimaraes will improve off the ball, though going off preseason, pressure will be on the Arsenal engine room in the absence of William Saliba.
Arteta, at least, does not see much to worry about, describing his new signing as "a player who obviously has tremendous timing and intuition to win the ball back and progress play very, very fast."
If there are at least partial questions over whether Guimaraes can leap up to Arsenal's level without the ball there are none over what he offers with the ball and that ultimately is the facet that this team most needed improving. As the likes of Oleksandr Zinchenko and Granit Xhaka were leveraged out of a side that became ever more muscular, so the passing burden fell more heavily on Martin Odegaard, unfortunate timing given that his knees and ankles have buckled too often in recent seasons.
That should change as soon as Guimaraes takes the pitch. For their money, Arsenal are getting one of the league's best passers from deep and around the final third. Since arriving in the Premier League, he averages nearly 8.5 line-breaking passes per 90, according to Opta, 11% more than the best of his new teammates. He profiles as elite not just at breaking the first line but at picking gaps through a defensive line.
Just look at the company he keeps, laid out in the graphics above and below. In total line-breaking passes only Rodri is well ahead of the Brazilian, in the danger zone he is keeping company with Odegaard and a host of the best creative players the league has seen in recent years. He executes with an opponent breathing down his neck too, ranking seventh in the league for passes into the attacking third under high pressure since he arrived in England.
"He's a player that is very comfortable putting people through, moving between the lines, moving in behind," Arteta added. "And then he's a goal threat. He's got a smell and a really good timing to get in the box. And he has the capacity to finish the actions."
With nine Premier League goals last season, more than any Arsenal player bar Viktor Gyokeres, you can see why Arteta likes what he can offer in the area. And, indeed, outside it, given that three of Guimaraes goals came from range. He even has that most Arsenal-ish of qualities: set piece threat. The 12 goals he has scored from dead balls is the joint-most of any midfielder in the Premier League since he arrived.
All that in a versatile package that, as Artet...
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