The Baggies’ Championship campaign gets underway with a trip to Nottingham Forest on Saturday night, which marks a return to the English game for the Croatian.
Bilic led West Ham from June 2015 to November 2017, before getting the sack less than half a year into a spell in charge of Saudi Arabian side Al-Ittihad last season.
“I signed (for West Brom) and before I came here I was cleaning out my backpack,” he said.
“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’.
“In life you can moan about the quality of the food, about the weather, it’s too hot, whatever. But it’s f***ing 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***ing privilege!
“Of course it’s hard but everything that’s good costs effort, energy. Am I happy? Of course I’m happy.”
“To be fair, the club did not say to me, ‘we have to go straight back to the Premier League’, but West Brom should challenge,” he said.
“West Brom needs to be there until the end. West Brom’s ambition cannot be mid-table. They didn’t bring me for that.”
PREDICTED! FourFourTwo’s 2019/20 Championship table
