I'm not in favour of signing someone for the sake of it and obviously January isn't the best time to..... BUT
Ralph obviously thought we were so what signal does this send to him if our position is "you can only sign someone of it looks like we might go down". I'll grant you, it's completely consistent with Gao's "strategy" of doing **** all and hoping for the best.
The other point is that Ralph must have identified some relatively realistic signings that we/he thought we could get. If we don't get them now, we need to get them in the summer, at which point there might be other interest.
If you assume Cedric, Yoshida and Long are leaving then that's three signings just to cover players in the matchday 16. Plus we need a left back if Vokins isn't rated and ideally we need another option in CM. And that's assuming we don't sell anyone else from the first team.
Also assumes we can shift Lemina, Carillo, Hoedt, Elyonnousi etc. to some mug again.
Chances of that all working out in the same window? Based on previous recent experience, pretty low.