GATESHEAD — Friday could well be the most important day of Newcastle United’s season.
July 31: ring it in your black and white calendars.
That is when captain Bruno Guimaraes is slated to return to pre-season training before flying out to La Manga for a week-long camp that they can’t afford to become a circus to rival last year’s tour of the Far East.
Back then, Alexander Isak was engineering the longest and bitterest of goodbyes as Newcastle struggled to contain the narrative from the other side of the globe.
In truth, neither player nor club has ever really recovered.
It is why all eyes are on the returning Guimaraes, who has let it be known he would like to move to Arsenal.
Unlike with Anthony Gordon and Sandro Tonali, however, there will be no quick deal.
Barcelona and Tottenham Hotspur met – and in the case of Tonali surpassed – Newcastle’s valuation of those two players but Arsenal’s offer is, in the words of one source, “at least” £10m shy of theirs.
What they don’t know, though, is how Guimaraes is going to play it.
Privately he was unhappy with Isak’s conduct last summer but football moves quickly and he wants to compete for Champions League and Premier League titles.
Newcastle seem to be heading into a transition phase and for a player who turns 29 this year, Arsenal’s appeal is understandable.
Could he go on strike? Or at least muddy the waters by returning with focus or fitness issues that prevent him from going to Spain with the rest of the squad?
If either of those things happen, alarm bells will go off at St James’ Park.
Arsenal would smell blood in the water and feel three weeks of innuendo surrounding Guimaraes’ future – without a formal bid at the time of writing – had been justified.
For Newcastle, there would be a decision to make.
Draw a line in the sand and refuse to be pushed around unless Arsenal meet their valuation, or cut their losses and talk turkey with the Gunners.
As appealing as the first option might sound, and goodness only knows supporters are looking for the Magpies to bear their teeth after a sobering 12 months, it also comes with the risk of the saga consuming the club like Isak-gate did.
The perfect scenario for Newcastle, and one insiders still believe, perhaps optimistically, will come to pass, is that Guimaraes returns, respects the club, lets the transfer play out and gets his head down.
“There is nothing to say that Bruno won’t be back training with us,” Eddie Howe said on Saturday after watching his team start pre-season with a 1-1 draw at Gateshead.
He described Guimaraes as “fantastic”, a “great player” and a “great person”.
Howe added they have spoken several times during the summer, including after a World Cup in which Guimaraes’ penalty miss contributed to Brazil’s shock exit to Norway.
He, though, was hedging his bets, saying he “doesn’t know what will happen with Bruno” but also emphasising the club want to keep him.
It all felt a bit messy, in truth.
You could say the same about the state Newcastle are in right now.
There were more than 7,000 fans at Gateshead on Saturday but plenty of empty seats, too.
For all that the Magpies are hoovering up promising talent in the transfer market, it is difficult not to feel anxious about the club’s direction given they have missed out on two players who would have gone straight into their starting XI and signed four who need time to develop and might not start when the serious stuff gets underway against Liverpool next month.
You can see what they are trying to do in the face of suffocating financial rules and Sean Steur, the 18-year-old midfielder signed from Ajax earlier this month, looked tidy against National League opponents.
He models his game on Kevin De Bruyne and it was a balm to hear him speak in glowing terms afterwards about Newcastle, its pull and the club’s vision.
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A reminder, perhaps, that this is a big club that 16 months ago felt on a very different journey from the one it is now on.
“Another challenging summer” was how Howe described it and he is not wrong.
They could really do with Guimaraes playing ball to wrestle some of that momentum back.
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