Newcastle's Bruno Guimaraes pursuit reminds Chelsea and Thomas Tuchel of £49.5m dodged bullet

Newcastle have unsurprisingly dominated a lot of the transfer chat in January.

Their attempt to avoid relegation coupled with the riches brought by their new owners has seen a flurry of rumoured moves.

Two have already come to fruition with Kieran Trippier and Chris Wood joining the Magpies this month, and another new addition could be on the horizon with The Chronicle reporting that talks between the Premier League strugglers and Bruno Guimaraes are moving "positively".

The Brazilian's possible switch to Eddie Howe's struggling side feels like one of the shock moves of the window given he had been linked with Arsenal, Tottenham and even Paris Saint-Germain.

The speculation surrounding the technically proficient and impressive midfielder brings into focus the type of player Chelsea should be pursuing in the upcoming summer window.

Guimaraes can be easily compared with Chelsea's current midfield metronome Jorginho. A scout report by Total Football Analysis earlier this month detailed the 24-year-old as being "typically heavily involved in Lyon’s build-up and ball progression phase".

The report goes on to add that Guimaraes has "a very high 68.31 passes per 90 this term while retaining 89.23% pass accuracy. His performance in both of these areas ranks him very highly among the 85 central midfielders/holding midfielders to have played at least 400 minutes in Ligue 1 this term".

This profile of player is not alien to Chelsea and is very similar to the type of players Thomas Tuchel has been fielding since his Stamford Bridge arrival last year.

It also relates to Chelsea's rumoured pursuit of Marco Verratti from PSG who Tuchel worked with for two seasons. 90min reported in May 2021 that Tuchel had suggested to the Blues