Newcastle United sporting director, Ross Wilson, admits the club had not planned to sell Bruno Guimaraes to Arsenal this summer.
Arsenal agreed a £75 million transfer fee with Newcastle earlier this week after weeks of negotiations for the Brazil international.
Newcastle were unhappy with Arsenal’s lack of direct talks over a deal for Guimaraes after their opening bid of £55m was communicated through intermediaries.
In an interview with The Telegraph, Wilson revealed that Guimaraes had asked to leave Newcastle this summer, which played a key role in the club’s decision to reach an agreement with Arsenal.
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‘We didn’t want to sell Bruno,’ Wilson said.
‘It wasn’t in the plan. He’s our captain, he was very important to us and the debate over his price… it’s a world-record fee for a [midfielder] of his age.
‘What we had to weigh up was, very respectfully from Bruno with his behaviour towards us, very emotionally, he effectively told us he wanted to leave. That doesn’t mean he can go, but it plays a part in our thinking when we hit a certain number.
‘But there’s no point saying it was part of our strategy and in our thinking this summer – it wasn’t.
‘But we have to be flexible and react to things that happen. It might have been in our plan to sign one player, but we didn’t get him so we move on to another. We can only be honest about that.
‘We’d love Bruno to be in our squad this summer but I’m sure there are other clubs that have lost players that wish they were in their squads.
‘It’s the world we live in, we had to adapt, we had to react. Having such an important player leave is disappointing but having a really important player who doesn’t want to play here – he’s honest about that – it was the only decision we could make.’
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