Steve Bruce faces a challenging summer at West Bromwich Albion as he tries to construct a squad capable of challenging for promotion to the Premier League.

On paper, the Baggies had a squad at the start of the 2021-22 season that looked tailor-made to produce an assault on the Championship title, and had a manager in Valerien Ismael who had previously gotten Barnsley as underdogs into the top six of the second tier.

Things derailed though during the season, which saw the Frenchman sacked and replaced by Bruce, who could not deliver consistent results to get Albion into the play-offs.

The reshaping of the playing squad has already begun, with the likes of Andy Carroll and Romaine Sawyers departing The Hawthorns and earlier this week, John Swift became Bruce's first signing of the summer when arriving from Reading after 24 goal contributions for the Royals last season.

Another player who departed West Brom was Sam Johnstone, who ended his four-year stint with the club when he made it clear that he was moving on to pastures new in the top flight, with a move to Crystal Palace expected.

That leaves a number of goalkeepers battling it out to become Bruce's number one next season - the experienced David Button, as well as Alex Palmer - who has not played a league game for the Baggies despite being 25 years old and a professional at the club for seven years, as well as youngster Josh Griffiths, who has spent the last two seasons on loan at Cheltenham Town and Lincoln City.

But could Bruce go out and bring in a new goalkeeper to replace Johnstone if he doesn't have faith in his current options? If that happens to be the case, then West Brom should go all-out for Gavin Bazunu of Manchester City.

Despite being just 20 years old, Bazunu has a lot of experience for a goalkeeper of his age, with 84 club appearances to his name already.

Bazunu joined Premier League champions City in February 2019 as a 17-year-old, and for the last two seasons he has been honing his craft in League One, firstly with Rochdale before moving on to Portsmouth.

His stint with Pompey in particular was impressive, averaging 2.9 saves per game - 59.3 per cent of those being with reflexes - and had a 97.6 per cent short passing accuracy with 13.66 of them played per game according to Wyscout, showing that he is more-than useful with both his hands and feet.

What showed him to be a fantastic player for Pompey even more than his stats though was the fact that he picked up both the Players' Player and overall Player of the Year award for the club for 2021-22, and it showed perhaps that he's ready for a step up the levels to the Championship.

There are already clubs said to be interested in the second tier, as well as in the Premier League, with the likes of Southampton and Bournemouth said to be keen.

However, he's more-likely to get the first-team football he desires in the Championship, and although there's competition for that starting spot at The Hawthorns, it can be argued that Bazunu is better than all of the current options and that he would walk into Steve Bruce's line-up.