Slaven Bilic doesn’t mind pressure. “Not a problem. That’s always been there,” the West Bromwich Albion head coach says. “It’s not like Guns N’ Roses. They went to bed being no one. They woke up in the morning and the agent called them and said, ‘Listen, you sold one million copies of Appetite For Destruction’, and suddenly they hit the big time.”



For Bilic, who has always fancied himself as a bit of a rock star, a lifetime in football has taught him how to deal with everything the game can throw at him. Everything apart from losing, that is. “Defeat, basically, is a killer,” he says. “It hurts. It’s a physical pain. And you never adjust to it.”



Bilic hates losing so much that he laughs about it. It is the sort of laugh that betrays a sense of helplessness about the absurdity of what managers go through at times in the dugout.



“Newcastle were playing Chelsea the...