It was in April, on a flight from Split to Manchester, via Frankfurt, that Slaven Bilic made a list. On it he wrote the names of eight clubs around Europe who he would - realistically - like to manage and who might want him.

Two months later Bilic was appointed the head coach of West Bromwich Albion. “I signed and before I came here I was cleaning out my backpack,” he says. “And I pulled out the piece of paper and I had written on it ‘West Brom’. So I showed it to my wife, Ivana, and said, ‘Look at this’.”

With that he thumps the table and smiles broadly, not for the last time in this interview. “In life you can moan,” Bilic says. “About the quality of the food, about the weather, it’s too hot, whatever. But it’s f------ great. It’s great. Yes, ‘chairman this and this’ or ‘club this and this’ but I’m a football manager. I’m the manager of West Bromwich Albion and, hey, it’s bloody great! It’s a f------ privilege! Of course it’s hard but everything that’s good costs effort, energy. Am I happy? Of course I’m happy.”

He looks it. It is a balmy evening in Birmingham and Bilic is settling down for dinner in an Italian restaurant that he has taken a liking to. Frankly, the weather is too hot but the food is also very good and with West Brom set to kick off their Championship campaign away to Nottingham Forest on Saturday evening, Bilic is content to chew over his hopes for this season, his return to English football, the need to sign more players, the craving for the “pressure” of being a manager and why his fellow Croatian, Filip Krovinovic, who he has signed on loan from Benfica, can do it on a wet Tuesday night in Stoke.