'Exceptional': Pep Guardiola praises 26-year-old Newcastle player ahead of tomorrow's FA Cup clash

Pep Guardiola spoke to the media ahead of Man City's FA Cup meeting with Newcastle United at the Etihad Stadium. Kick-off is 5:30pm Live on BBC.

Manchester City have an embarrassment of riches in their squad but they're never content with what they have and are always on the lookout for the next big star and that's why Bruno Guimaraes has recently been linked with a move to Pep Guardiola's trophy-laden side.

As Newcastle fans we're no strangers to seeing our biggest players linked with moves away. Some of them don't even have a chance to unpack their bags before they're linked in the media to 'bigger and better things'.

Bruno Guimaraes has been consistently reported as being a target for Barcelona and Real Madrid as the media struggles to come to terms with what Newcastle are building and that Bruno is a centrepiece of that project.

Bruno's future is always a hot topic of debate

Bruno has often had to come out and state his intentions are to stay at the club and that he wants to help the side end their trophy drought, but that's not stopping him now being linked with Manchester City.

We're not naive, we know Bruno isn't going to hang around forever, and if we have another season like this one, we don't expect he'll be hanging around much longer. But Bruno can see that this has been no ordinary season and it would be unfair to judge the project's progress on this campaign given the amount of injuries, difficult cup draws and the fact that we were never realistically going to replicate last season's form.

At the same time, we know how cashing in on Guimaraes could kick-start a new revolution at St James' Park.

What we are confident about, is that Bruno won't go to another Premier League side, and if he does it won't be to Manchester City unless he is given assurances of game time. Kalvin Phillips and fellow Brazilian Matheus Nunes can be used as cautionary tales on that front.

Pep Guardiola is a huge admirer of Bruno Guimaraes

In his press conference earlier, Pep Guardiola was asked what it was about Bruno that he admired given how he's publicly spoken of his admiration before.

"An exceptional holding midfielder. Aggressive with the ball, at set-pieces he's aggressive. A real, real complete holding midfielder.

"Since playing with Lyon and now he's at a club that wants to grow up and grow up and I'm pretty sure he's part of the project for the next years, definitely."

That's right, Pep, he's part of the project for the next years, so keep your amazingly talented mitts off!