West Brom head to White Hart Lane this weekend with the opportunity to earn a third consecutive Premier League victory, but it will undoubtedly be a tough task against Mauricio Pochettino's equally in-form Tottenham side.
Tony Pulis' team have a good recent record against Spurs as well, particularly away from home, with West Brom unbeaten in their last four games on Tottenham's home patch, including a 1-1 draw at the end of the last season that played a part in the late collapse of Spurs' title challenge.
Despite this recent good record, West Brom will have to be at their best to earn even a point from this fixture. Pulis' team are likely to find themselves on the back foot for the majority of this contest, meaning that there will be a heavy reliance on the likes of Gareth McAuley and Jonny Evans to be in top form. However, West Brom's attacking players will also need to influence the game in a positive sense to ease and limit the amount of pressure that they will inevitably face.
This includes club-record signing Nacer Chadli, who returns to White Hart Lane for the first time since he moved to West Brom in the summer transfer window. Having looked out of form in recent weeks, Pulis will be hopeful that the chance to get one over on his old employers will be motivation enough to get the Belgian International back somewhere near his best.
Chadli had an electric start to his career at The Hawthorns and West Brom will be desperate to get him back into that kind of form as they head into the second half of the season. In his first five games with the club, the attacking midfielder grabbed four goals and two assists, including the opening goal in the reverse fixture.
These contributions which were combined with a series of impressive performances playing in the No. 10 role behind Salomon Rondon. This level of performance perhaps raised expectations to a slightly unrealistic level, as Chadli was never going to do that over the course of an entire season or else Spurs would never have let him leave. He then had to have minor surgery on a knee injury, which led to him missing nearly a month's worth of games and the Belgian hasn't looked quite the same player since.
There has been the odd moment of quality, such as a 20-minute spell against Swansea in which he dominated the game and helped West Brom to a 3-1 win, but for the most part, Chadli has looked off the pace with even his normally reliable touch letting him down on occasion. To a certain extent, Chadli has simply been the victim of circumstance.
After those performances in his opening five games, it would have been unthinkable for West Brom to play anyone but the Belgian in the No. 10 role behind Rondon. But his injury presented an opportunity for Pulis to return James Morrison to his starting line-up and the long-serving midfielder took that opportunity with both hands, emergin as one of the key figures in West Brom's ascent up the table.
This meant that when Chadli returned from injury, there wasn't really a natural way to fit him into the side, which resulted in the Belgium International being shoehorned into a wide role rather than his preferred central position. Chadli did a decent job out wide in his time at Spurs but it is a very different job playing that role for West Brom, where there is as much focus on the defensive side of the game as there is going forward.
The ideal solution to this problem would be to use Morrison in a slightly deeper role, a position in which he has thrived previously, with Chadli playing behind Rondon. However, this would mean sacrificing one of Darren Fletcher or Claudio Yacob, who have been the midfield axis ever since Pulis arrived at The Hawthorns. This was never likely to happen and there can be very little qualms with the Welshman's decision, as that partnership has been key to West Brom's fortunes this season.
Arguably one of the most impressive aspects of the impressive run that Albion have put together is they have done it without Chadli having much influence. This has undoubtedly been aided by the scintillating form of Matt Phillips, who has arguably displaced Chadli as Pulis' best signing in the summer transfer window.
The quality of Chadli cannot be doubted and with West Brom seemingly struggling to add players of similar ability in the January Transfer Window, the club record signing will have a big part to play in the remainder of the season, starting Saturday at White Hart Lane.