Even if there isn't money to burn, my hope is that the club is at least in a position to capitalise when a high-quality player is on the market at a point in their career where, for whatever reason, the top sides aren't prepared to pull the trigger on buying them. A recent example could be Bruno Fernandes, who was desperate to leave Sporting in August, and perhaps might have been persuaded to make a smaller step up once United and Tottenham balked at the asking price. To me, this has a higher potential upside than the current model of targeting players who have already shown themselves incapable of hacking it at the elite level, and I'm encouraged by the fact that we've recently seen the managerial equivalent of punching above our weight with Ancelotti.
Everton will never be 'back' until they can offer regular Champions League football, not only to players, but also sponsors, and that won't be possible without the kind of talent whose presence alone is enough to lift his teammates (eg Modric and Bale at Tottenham, Suarez at Liverpool or Silva at City). No one has had anything like that kind of impact here since Kanchelskis, and he even he only gave us his best for a criminally short amount of time (probably more comparable to Payet at West Ham than those previously mentioned).
Also, there must surely be some concern among the directors about the scouting in general. There has been something fundamentally wrong with Everton's recruitment since the Martinez regime began to unravel, and I'm not at all convinced that Brands is the man to sort this mess out. If the plan is to plug gaps with Fraser-types while hoping to rehabilitate more Barcelona rejects, I would be amazed to see this team close the gap on Wolves and Leicester, never mind Chelsea and United.