AUGUST 15 ― At long last the English Premier League (“EPL”) is back, and while there really hasn’t been much happening with my club Tottenham Hotspur in terms of exciting transfer news, it’s what’s happening at other EPL clubs that have got football geeks everywhere pretty excited for the new season.

Maybe it’s because we’re Malaysians, so we don’t really have that traditional “local” ties to the clubs we support. My friends and I often have what we’d call a “second team” to root for. When Tony Fernandes first took over Queens Park Rangers and Air Asia became their shirt sponsor, I’m pretty sure that QPR became most Malaysians’ second team, the same way that Norwich City became our second team when Proton became their shirt sponsor before that. Even Cardiff City became a point of interest for Malaysian EPL fans when Vincent Tan took over the club and they got promoted to the EPL, albeit for only one season as they immediately got relegated.

But if you’re more of a football connoisseur, I think it’s the brand of football that a club plays that usually seals the deal when it comes to picking a second club, coupled with some sort of rousing underdog story to make it interesting and exciting enough to root for that team.

Two seasons back, I think almost everyone was captivated by Swansea City and the storming success of Michu. And last season undoubtedly belonged to Southampton and its manager Ronald Koeman in the hearts of neutrals as the club’s narrative of having its spine torn apart after selling key players like Adam Lallana, Rickie Lambert, Dejan Lovren, Luke Shaw and Calum Chambers became too irresistible as their replacements like Dusan Tadic, Graziano Pelle, Ryan Bertrand, Toby Alderweireld and Sadio Mane all became instant hits, propelling the club to a seventh place finish (and highest ever points total) instead of the relegation battle that many predicted.

This season, however, seems to be a different story. It may be because there’s more money than ever now available to EPL clubs, even for the ones closer to the bottom of the table, but the biggest story so far this season has been the surprising amount of shocking transfer coups that these so called “smaller” clubs have managed to pull off.

Swansea City may have sold their star striker Wilfred Bony during last season’s January transfer window, and they’ve managed to make do by relying on Bafetimbi Gomis for the rest of the season, but the arrival of Andre Ayew from Marseille, on a free transfer to boot, suddenly makes their strike force look like a force to be reckoned, which was exactly what defending champions Chelsea found out last weekend as they drew 2-2.

Tellingly, Andre Ayew is not even the most delicious piece of transfer business among the smaller clubs this summer. The transfer of Yohan Cabaye from French giants Paris Saint-Germain to Crystal Palace has the potential to be the best piece of transfer of the summer. The presence of Cabaye’s former manager Alain Pardew at Palace may have sealed the deal for him, but the fact that Palace have bought from PSG is still something one wouldn’t normally dream of.

And what about Pardew and Cabaye’s former club Newcastle? Isn’t it unbelievable that out of all clubs it is they who have managed to sign Georginio Wijnaldum from PSV Eindhoven, who is one of the Netherlands’ most highly rated players right now. Even Sunderland, surely one of the prime candidates for a relegation battle this year have managed to convince Jeremain Lens to ditch Champions League football (albeit for Dynamo Kiev) and join them for a highly likely relegation battle. Isn’t all this exciting?

However, there’s probably nothing more exciting this season than the story that’s unfolding at Stoke City at the moment. Long stereotyped as a physical and typically English long-ball playing side, so much so that there’s an often used catchphrase to damp down excitement on the arrival of a highly skillful new player from a foreign league, which asks, “But can he handle a cold hard Tuesday night in Stoke?”, Stoke has quietly built up a collection of Barcelona players and Champions League winners that surely proves they’re no longer the tough tackling bullies that people often made them out to be.

With the arrival of Ibrahim Affelay from Barcelona and just a few days ago Xherdan Shaqiri from Inter Milan, Stoke now technically has 5 Champions League winners in their squad, with only two other clubs in the EPL (Chelsea and Manchester United) having more of those in their ranks. And believe it or not, there are now more Champions League winners at Stoke than there are at Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester City combined! Whether these players will go on to become hits in the EPL is something that we’ll find out later on as the season progresses. For now, let us bask in the excitement of having all these exciting players plying their trade in the most unlikely of clubs.

*This is the personal opinion of the columnist.