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 board a need to secure the £49.5m rated playmaker (price as per Transfermarkt).
Despite the clear connection between Verratti and Tuchel, that rumour never really threatened to take off. Instead, stronger links were found in West Ham's Declan Rice and Monaco's Aurelien Tchouameni, two players the club have tracked for several years.
Apart from Guimaraes and Verratti, whose oxygen is possession, Rice and Tchouameni excel in more physical attributes and intercepting - something Chelsea's current midfield lacks apart from the exceptional N'Golo Kante.
That profile of a more defensively-minded midfielder is more of a gap in Chelsea's squad than another player of Jorginho's ilk.
Another reason to feel no regret over missing out on either Guimaraes or Verratti is the improvement made by Mateo Kovacic this season, with the Croatia international enjoying his most influential year at Stamford Bridge.
A brief overview of Guimaraes and Kovacic's numbers this season (via FBref) paints a similar picture.
Kovacic betters Guimaraes in per 90 numbers in progressive passes, progressive carries and dribbles completed, while the seemingly Newcastle-bound man excels in pressures and tackles.
Kovacic's form has silenced a lot of his critics to become one of Chelsea's most important players, and his progress should only cement the need for a different type of profile in the Blues' midfield.
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