When Serge Gnabry scored the first of his two goals for Bayern Munich on Wednesday night, you could imagine Tony Pulis reaching for the remote and switching his TV off.
Yes, that was the same Serge Gnabry, who failed to make Pulis' first-team squad during a disastrous loan spell at West Brom, scoring twice in a Champions League semi-final.
It was also the same Serge Gnabry who has scored nine goals in nine European games this season and is arguably the most in-form winger on the planet.
Gnabry's journey to the summit of European football has been a long one. It has taken in a failed spell at West Brom, rejection by Arsenal and short stints at Werder Bremen and Hoffenheim, but he is now 90 minutes away from Champions League glory.
His brace against Lyon on Wednesday night showed exactly the player he has developed into. Gnabry has learned to harness his greatest attributes and put them to good use in the games that matter.
The first of his two goals was a beauty. He controlled the ball around 20 yards from goal out towards the right wing before accelerating across the face of the penalty area before slamming the ball into the top corner with his supposed weaker foot.
His second showed another side to his game.
Gnabry, again dribbling at pace, played the ball out to the left wing before sprinting into the box to tap home from close range after Anthony Lopes failed to gather the loose ball.
But rewind five years and a Champions League semi-final in Lisbon would have been the last place you expected Gnabry to excel.
In the summer of 2015 the German signed on loan for West Brom to further his development and get some exposure to first-team football. But he managed just 12 minutes of Premier League football and two starts in the League Cup.
'Serge has come here to play games but he just hasn't been for me, at the moment, at that level to play the games,' Pulis said back in 2015.
'He's come from academy football and not played much league football. Does academy football really prepare players for league football? And we're talking about Premier League football here.
'As a manager you pick a team that's going to win a game of football. You pick your best team. You don't leave people out because you don't like them, because of this, that and the other.'
Gnabry lived alone in Birmingham, was visited on occasion by his parents, and things were made tougher by a lack of game time.
When asked by Sportsmail in an exclusive interview what was behind his failure in the Midlands, Gnabry was unequivocal in his version.
'Tony Pulis,' he said. 'Ask Tony Pulis. Different styles, different opinions. I can't really say too much, but I tried my best at West Brom and it didn't work out.
'I was told I would be getting a lot of game time, otherwise I could have signed for another team.
'They really seemed like they were going to play me. Mentally for me, in that time at West Brom, I said to myself: "Even though I have zero chance of playing, all I can do is work hard." That mentality has stayed with me today and helped me to become a Bayern player.'
Pulis, to his credit, was magnanimous with his comments after Gnabry's sublime performance against Tottenham earlier this season where he scored four goals in Bayern's 7-2 win in north London.
'I'm amazed,' he said. 'He was a nice kid, I didn't mind him at all and he's really fulfilled his potential. To have him at West Brom and seeing him do what he's done is absolutely amazing.
'When people show what they can really do and knuckle down and become so good as he's done it's absolutely fantastic.'
That performance against Spurs saw Gnabry become one of very few players to receive a 10/10 in French newspaper L'Equipe's notoriously strict player ratings.
His nightmare at West Brom ended six months later when he was brought back to Arsenal in January 2016.
Arsenal offered him a new deal to stay in London but who could blame Gnabry for wanting to go home, especially when his time in England was so unpleasant.
Arsene Wenger wanted to keep him and recently claimed Bayern 'manipulated' things behind the scenes and hinted that they would eventually come and get him if he went to Werder Bremen.
Wenger turned out to be right. It was a short lay-over before ending up in Bavaria 12 months later after hitting 11 goals in 27 Bundesliga games for Werder Bremen.
Aside from a loan at Hoffenheim - a move he requested and where he worked with the impressive Julian Nagelsmann - his stay in Bayern has finally offered Gnabry a sense of belonging that had been missing from his career.
Wednesday night's dismantling of Lyon was the most recent in a series of stunning European performances this season.
As well as his four-goal salvo at Tottenham in October, he scored a brace at Stamford Bridge before the season was halted by coronavirus and found the back of the net in the rout of Barcelona last week.
In total, Gnabry has scored 23 goals and contributed 14 assists in 45 appearances across all competitions this season.
Not a bad return for a man who couldn't get in West Brom's team.
Gnabry finally looks like he's at home in Munich and Bayern are reaping the rewards of gambling on a player whose career could have gone in any direction.
The ultimate pay off could come in Sunday night's Champions League final against Paris Saint-Germain. Pulis will surely have his TV remote close by.