Nacer Chadli has lost a bet with Tony Pulis over a Belgium recall and owes him dinner.

But taking West Bromwich Albion’s head coach to a swanky Birmingham restaurant is all the proof Chadli needs to show why he swapped Tottenham Hotspur for The Hawthorns.

His £13 million move in August, a West Brom club record, left many of Chadli’s closest friends bewildered and Spurs team-mates including Toby Alderweireld and Jan Vertonghen were imploring him to stay.

Yet the bitter disappointment of missing Euro 2016 with Belgium and the prospect of gathering dust on the bench convinced Chadli it was a move worth making. Nicknamed ‘The Dolphin’ during his time at Spurs (we will explain why later), Chadli is now loving life as the big fish in a small pond.

"A lot of my friends could not understand me coming here, that is true. Players sometimes prefer to be at a bigger club but being involved, even at a smaller club, would be my choice every time,” he says, sitting at West Brom's training ground this week.