Bilic has guided West Brom to the top of the Championship on his return to English football

“Basically,” Slaven Bilic says of his obsession with management, “you’re like a junkie.” It’s a fix the charismatic Croat cannot live without, even with all the pressures, dealing with players’ whims and the relentless demands of owners, fans and media.

When he’s out of work, Bilic says intently, he is an anguished exile from the training ground and stadium, unable to “smell the grass”. He hates to be disengaged from the adrenalin of hunting scalps, as when Croatia humiliated England in 2007, or chasing promotion, as now with a reinvigorated West Bromwich Albion.

The 51-year-old recalls staring into the void after being sacked by West Ham United in November 2017, the sudden termination of a daily routine, of meetings, organising, leading a group, sharing the