It is about time Arsenal pushed forward and neared a total agreement for the transfer of Newcastle United’s Bruno Guimaraes.After missing out on Morgan Rogers, who joined Chelsea from Aston Villa for £117million ($157m), there is a feeling that the club must get a move on with their incoming summer transfer business. Alongside Guimaraes, they also want to add a defender and are trying to pull off a deal for Vinicius Junior.Christos Tzolis has arrived for €40m from Club Brugge, but is the only new signing who truly impacts the first team. Arsenal kicked off their pre-season at the weekend (beating Girona on August 1). Speaking directly after the Champions League final, Mikel Arteta spoke of a need to be “very, very ambitious, very fast and very smart.”Arsenal are the Premier League champions, but that title alone will not earn them any points when the campaign kicks off next month on August 21, at home to Coventry City.Too good to arrive from Newcastle United, where he is the captain, as a backup, Guimaraes would be a quality operator with and without the ball who reinforces the midfield.Seasons that follow international tournaments are never easy to navigate. As well as prolonging pursuits for players, five of the 10 Arsenal players who reached the World Cup quarter-finals were midfielders — Martin Zubimendi and Mikel Merino with Spain, Declan Rice and Eberechi Eze with England and Martin Odegaard with Norway. Four of these five (Odegaard being the exception) made it to the final weekend of the tournament, played on July 18 and 19. Players are meant to have three weeks off after international tournaments, so the quickest logical return to training for these players would be around Arsenal’s third and penultimate pre-season match, against Borussia Dortmund at Emirates Stadium on August 9.That, alongside a truncated pre-season, could complicate matters for them more than most, with less clarity and more staggered returns from midfielders in pre-season.Guimaraes’ exit with Brazil in the last 16 on July 5 means he would have had enough time to rest and recover from his time in the States to be with Arsenal for most of pre-season.Agreeing a deal now hopefully means Guimaraes’ move will not drag into the season proper.With Zubimendi, Merino, Rice, Eze and Odegaard going deep into the tournament, Arsenal’s only real first-team midfield options who would come into the 2026-27 campaign completely fresh are Myles Lewis-Skelly and Ethan Nwaneri. Kai Havertz played in the middle of the park against Girona, but he also featured at the World Cup.