Stoke City are reaping the rewards of intelligent recruitment

There have been a string of new terms added to the Premier League's buzzword lexicon of late (honourable mentions to Louis van Gaal for his "philosophy" and Brendan Rodgers for his "system"), but one of the most common has arrived in reference to the perils and pitfalls of "player recruitment." Perhaps the reason the term is quite so jarring is its making of a corporate formality out of what was traditionally one of football's most romantically human moments, when grizzled scouts went out in search of tomorrow's star of the future and tried to cajole him -- or perhaps his parents -- into signing on the dotted line. But, in an age of directors of football and Prozone statistics, teams prefer to talk of "recruitment" than of signings; the process of acquiring a player, at least from the outside, no more romantic than purchasing a pixel-faced Football Manager regen.

For teams that have managed to harness the power of modern day scouting, the benefits have been obvious. West Ham United are one of the most obvious benefactors, if only by virtue of their dramatic transformation from relegation strugglers to European challengers in mere months; little-known summer signings like Diafra Sakho and Cheikhou Kouyaté having established themselves as household names under the Premier League's resident stats nerd Sam Allardyce. This is, after all, a man who once played the then-Bolton Wanderers centre-forward Henrik Pedersen at left-back after a thorough analysis of his statistical outputs suggested he could.

However, one club's improvement in the transfer market has perhaps been a little overlooked. In their years under Tony Pulis, Stoke City spent a eye-watering amount of money, yet somehow failed to improve while doing so. That isn't to say Pulis didn't do a great job at the Britannia -- in establishing the Potters as a solid Premier League side he did more than most would've been able to -- but he remained incapable of achieving anything more than constant lower mid-table finishes. Given that he broke a club record to sign Dave Kitson, then again to sign Kenwyne Jones and then Wilson Palacios, his ability to keep Stoke in the top flight is testament to his brilliance as a coach, and certainly not his ability as a transfer chief. Among the Joneses and the Kitsons there were Asmir Begović, Robert Huth and Steven Nzonzi, but for every good signing there was an equal and opposite (and expensive) bad one.

Despite his transfer market failures, sacking Pulis seemed like a big risk. After all, his talents lie in getting the best out of bad teams, and Stoke certainly didn't look like a particularly good one. What's more, hiring Mark Hughes looked like a frustratingly sideways step. Sure, he was a solid replacement, comfortably and consistently having kept Blackburn Rovers in the top flight, led Fulham to a top-half finish, and overseen Queens Park Rangers' dramatic relegation survival back in 2012, but it seemed that they were swapping one angry Welsh proponent of a brutish brand of long-ball for another. When he let Fulham in 2011, claiming that he wanted to "further [his] experiences" as a "young, ambitious manager," Hughes was roundly mocked as a man with an impressive colossal delusion of grandeur.

But Hughes is proving himself to be more adroit than he's given credit for. Having worked alongside Stoke's technical director Mark Cartwright, he's landed a string of new signings that have enabled the Potters to look up the table rather than down it. When he made young Barcelona centre-back Marc Muniesa one of his first signings as manager, a few eyebrows were raised. But after a year of acclimatisation, the Spaniard is now looking like an excellent young defender. The same is true of full-back Erik Pieters, winger Marko Arnautović, and striker Mame Biram Diouf, while another Barcelona arrival (and a man who once looked too meek to make a noise in La Liga), Bojan, is also showing promise.