Heard the one about the Barcelona player who signed for Stoke? As football philosophies go, the reigning European champions’ tiki-taka approach used to be as far removed from the brand of football feted in the Potteries under Tony Pulis as it was possible to be. Not any more.

The signing of the Dutch winger Ibrahim Afellay after the end of his contract in Catalonia means four players have taken the journey from Camp Nou to the Clayton Wood training complex next to the busy A500. A trend that was started when Marc Muniesa – the defender who represented Spain at all age-group levels – arrived in 2013 on a free transfer has now seen Bojan Krkic, the highly rated teenage Morocco winger Moha El Ouriachi and Afellay join Mark Hughes’ increasingly cosmopolitan band.

“I wouldn’t call it a special relationship but we get on well with Barcelona – it is a very big club so clearly they are people we would like to get on well with,” says Stoke’s chief executive, Tony Scholes.

“Every player is different but there’s no doubt that it can help when they know two or three other players in the dressing room already, particularly if they are coming from overseas. It helps them make that decision and to acclimatise quickly.”

The Stoke revolution has not just been confined to former Barça players. Joselu, a striker who was signed by Real Madrid in 2009 before thriving in the Bundesliga, the Germany defender Philipp Wollscheid, Glen Johnson and the Holland midfielder Marco van Ginkel, on a season-long loan from Chelsea, have also been added to a squad who finished ninth in the Premier League last season.

Compare that list of names to the arrivals of Michael Kightly, Geoff Cameron, Charlie Adam and Maurice Edu on the eve of the 2012-13 season – the last of Pulis’ eight seasons at the helm – and it is clear how far things have progressed.

“The perception of our club is changing but really that change happened when Mark arrived,” Scholes says.

“He wanted to play a different style of football, retaining the strength that we already had but introducing a little bit of flair as well. It’s fair to say that some of the players we go for now wouldn’t have necessarily seen themselves as a Stoke player three or four years ago.

“When you’re looking to recruit a top player, they want to know they will be playing in a team that suits their abilities and playing for a manager who is going to help them develop. When they sit down face-to-face with Mark, he has played at the very top of the game so that can only help.”

Described by one member of Stoke’s staff as “our secret weapon”, there is no doubt the pulling power of a manager who enjoyed spells at Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Manchester United during his playing days. Van Ginkel, who spent last season on loan at Milan and was wanted by a host of big European clubs when José Mourinho made it clear he was not part of his immediate plans, was convinced to join after a meeting with Hughes where the former Wales manager outlined exactly what role he had planned for the 22-year-old central midfielder.

“It’s the way Stoke play that was the most important thing for Marco,” says his agent Karel Jansen, who has also represented Afellay.

“They want to play football. He had a good chat with Mark Hughes which was very beneficial and convinced us Stoke was the right place to continue his development next season. The atmosphere at the club is positive and I think they will surprise a few people.”

A scouting department led by the technical director, Mark Cartwright, a former goalkeeper who played for Wrexham, Brighton and Shrewsbury, help to identify prospective targets in tandem with Hughes, while Scholes leads negotiations with agents and clubs over salaries and transfer fees. The chairman, Peter Coates, also retains an influential role having orchestrated the rise from Championship to Premier League.

Scholes admits the race to sign new players is becoming increasingly harder as the years go by. “More teams appear to be out there attempting to strengthen their squads than was the case last year,” he says. “The Premier League has been arguably the most attractive league for players for some time but this summer that’s the case more than ever.

“Firstly because of the new TV deal which comes in next year but there’s also other factors like the relative strength of other leagues and the strength of the euro. We’re playing in a very tough league with a group of extremely good teams in it. We’ve finished ninth for the past two seasons and if we are to maintain or improve on that we have to be looking to make additions to the squad.

“It’s natural that we should be looking at exceptional players, although it becomes a lot harder to make the deals happen. More often than not, we’ll fail in trying to attract top players but we do everything we can and on many occasions we’ll succeed as well.”

Among those to have been pursued this summer are the Internazionale forward Xherdan Shaqiri and Yevhen Konoplyanka, who opted to join the Europa League winners Sevilla from Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk having been tracked by Liverpool and Tottenham in the past. Hughes remains confident an approach for Konoplyanka’s Ukraine team-mate Andriy Yarmolenko could still prove fruitful, although Scholes insists they are more than happy with the seven new arrivals since the end of last season.

“Shaqiri is a good example of what can happen. We agreed a deal with Inter and we hoped he would decide to come to us but he wanted longer to make his decision and see what other options were available,” he says.

“We weren’t prepared to wait so we had to move on and obviously you only want players who are keen to come to you. Sometimes you never know how close you are until you’ve got the deal. We always have a number of alternatives for the targets we’re chasing.”

While jokes doing the rounds on social media after Afellay’s signing that Andrés Iniesta is Stoke’s next target remain just a little far-fetched, do not be surprised if more household names end up in Staffordshire some time soon.

• This article was amended on 4 September 2015. An earlier version said that Konoplyanka joined Sevilla from Dynamo Kiev, rather than Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk.

