Bruno Guimarães named Newcastle Player of the Month for May

For one last time in the 2021/22 season, FUN88 handed their Player of the Month award among Newcastle players. And of course, Bruno got the honors for the second time in a row after doing so a month ago.

It was kinda close with Callum Wilson back, fit, and dumping goals on opponents’ nets. At the end of the day, though, Bruno nearly doubled Wilson’s vote count on his way to getting named Newcastle’s PotM with an absolute majority of the voters siding with him.

Here are Bruno’s performances through the end of May, including his basic statistics and playing time (player rating courtesy of FotMob):

Not the largest sample, but definitely not an easy one either. Newcastle faced—and suffered—eventual Premier League champions Manchester City after having played Liverpool mere days before that game, then hosted Arsenal for a grand home finale, and ultimately sent Burnley packing down to the Championship in the final game of the season at Moor Turf.

In a little bit more detail, now looking at heat maps from SofaScore, this is what Bruno did through the month and his three games played with the Magpies to wrap up the Premier League campaign and head into the summer break.

While not able to do a lot on offense against City with Pep’s side clearly dominating United, the games against Arsenal at home and Burnley away allowed Bruno much more room to put on back-to-back masterclasses. Bruno made the midfield his operating room commanding Newcastle from the deep-mid against the Gunners and running forward combining with fellow Brazilian Joelinton and adopted Brazilian Allan Saint-Maximin. Burnley never had a chance against the Toon and Bruno took advantage of the related side covering vast areas of the pitch and making the Clarets work heavily to try and stop him—something they couldn’t do.

Shouts out to the other three men nominated for this little in-house award—academy product Sean Longstaff, loanee Matt Target, and ball-netter Callum Wilson—as they fully deserved the nod and in fact, all got votes with the two-three-four positions occupied by Wilson, Targett, and Longstaff in that order.

Bruno will take on South Korea next Thursday as part of the Brazilian national team’s trip to the Asian country, then play Japan the following Monday, and finally close their summer tour against mighty Argentina on Saturday, June 11.