I get what you've meant (like buying to Benfica the dude they brought for pennies a year before), yet you made me laugh with that one because actually it wasn't the less obvious,
it was always the MOST obvious places.
It's one of the reasons Serie A and la Liga had historically better teams and names.
In my COCKY opinion, the Brazilian and Argentinian League were always the MOST obvious leagues to go shopping.
The thing is that the Insular and Anglo aspect of the EPL (and the prior one) always made the British go shopping on Holland, Nordic Countries and among the Isles.
The same happened with coaches and only in more recent times adquiring Continental Coaches made the entire League shift it's style.
In any case not long ago, it was harder to go fishing, it was cheaper than buying in Europe in most cases but still would have cost a penny to buy a
Samuel, Aimar, and such...yet that extra penny also meant a more mature player with more games under his belly.
Nowadays like you've said, buying in this "pedophile" style
it's riskier in terms of posible perfomances but at the same time a lot cheaper.
If this will make at some point, imany transfers to end in failure and kind of ruining the crops, we don't know, but I hope not.