Newcastle get timely boost as £100m superstar looking more likely to stay - journalist

The big worry for most Newcastle United fans this summer is that we fail to hold on to our biggest stars with Bruno Guimaraes and Alexander Isak persistently linked with moves away.

It has almost become a personal mission to shoot down reports of our biggest stars leaving this summer, and while we're not 100% convinced we will keep hold of Alexander Isak, our confidence in retaining the services of Bruno Guimaraes is about as strong as it gets.

To be clear, we don't think we will sell Isak this summer, but if either or our two biggest names were to leave this summer, it's more likely to be the Swede than the Brazilian.

That's now become even more confirmed by journalist Ben Jacobs who now believes that the only club we deem capable of activating Bruno's £100million release clause, are no longer interested.

Newcastle's release clause in Bruno's contract was genius

Newcastle did brilliantly with including the release clause in Bruno's contract. It is only active for clubs outside of the Premier League for a start meaning a direct rival couldn't sign him, and then to add to the genius even more, it is only active for one month before the transfer window officially opens and the new financial reporting year for FFP starts, which means that any club who wanted to sign Bruno must have £100million spare in their budget left over from this season.

We speculated that the only club that could possibly have that kind of money would be Paris Saint-Germain, but now it seems as though they are no longer interested in Guimaraes.

Although he doesn't state why PSG have cooled their interest, Jacobs does say that PSG will be looking elsewhere.

PSG will invest their Mbappe money on several players

"Once Kylian Mbappe’s exit terms are finalised and formalised PSG will be in for a busy summer.

"Rather than spending all their freed up budget on a like-for-like replacement, PSG are expected to continue their youth-led project adding a striker, winger, central midfielder and centre-back. Napoli's Victor Osimhen still a name to watch.

"Understand PSG are now no longer in the conversation for Bruno Guimarães. No plans to trigger his release clause or negotiate with Newcastle. Bernardo Silva remains a target."

That freed up budget that Jacobs mention won't actually come into play until after Bruno's contract clause is closed anyway, so it's sort of irrelevant, but I'm sure there would be some way around it if they were really interested.

All signs are now completely pointing towards another season at least of Bruno Guimaraes at Newcastle. Now we just need to move our confidence needle on Isak closer to that 100% mark for that extra peace of mind.