Sutton is right. Danny Rohl is guilty of hubris. It has come back to bite him.

Chris Sutton has told Danny Rohl that he should have kept his mouth shut in the run-up to the Celtic games. He is absolutely correct.

Because what we have seen over the last couple of weeks is not just a manager under pressure. It is a manager creating pressure for himself, feeding it, and then being crushed by it when reality catches up.

It started with Luke McCowan’s comment. A simple statement. Nothing outrageous. Nothing particularly controversial. McCowan said that no club in the country can live with Celtic when we are on our game.

Most managers would have brushed that off. Filed it away. Hell he should have, because McCowan didn’t mention his team at all. There are managers who might have filed those comments away quietly for a team motivation speech.

Rohl, instead, went off on one. He took it personally for some reason, and he turned it into a point of public contention. He elevated it into something it never needed to be.

At 2-0 up at half time in the league game, he must have thought he had been proven right. In that moment, the rant probably felt justified. The scoreboard backed him up. The narrative, briefly, was his.

Then the second half happened. Celtic turned it around and dominated. Celtic exposed exactly what McCowan had been talking about.

And the game finished 2-2.

That should have been the moment for reflection. That should have been the moment where Rohl recognised that perhaps, just perhaps, he had overplayed his hand.

Instead, he doubled down.

Before the cup game, he claimed Celtic were not even the toughest opponents his side had faced this season. That is not just bravado. That is not just mind games. It is a manager talking himself into a corner.

Because once you say that publicly, you have to back it up. And he didn’t.

He faced a Celtic side that was, by any reasonable measure, weaker than the one he had already struggled against the week before, and he went out of the cup.

That is the problem with hubris. It sometimes demands the receipts, and when the evidence does not arrive, it leaves you looking exposed.

Rohl’s behaviour over these games has all the hallmarks of what might politely be called the Ibrox disease. The inability to recognise when silence is the smarter option. The compulsion to talk, to provoke, to posture, even when the situation does not call for it.

It is not confidence. It is insecurity. Weakness.

The truly confident managers do not need to tell you how good they are. They do not need to diminish the opposition. They do not need to win arguments in press conferences.

Good managers just let their teams do the talking.

Rohl, instead, has been digging holes for himself and then acting surprised when he falls into them. And the most telling part of all this is what he said about silverware. He described it as unthinkable that his club would not win something this season.

Unthinkable. That is a dangerous word in football.

Because football has a long memory when it comes to statements like that.

History is littered with examples of people who convinced themselves that certain outcomes were inevitable, only to be brought crashing back down to earth.

Napoleon marched into Russia convinced of his own invincibility.

The result was catastrophe.

The Titanic was declared unsinkable.

We all know how that ended.

In football terms, Kevin Keegan’s famous “I would love it if we beat them” speech still echoes decades later, not because of the sentiment, but because of what followed.

José Mourinho once described himself as “The Special One” and, for a time, he backed it up. But even he has learned, over the years, that football has a way of humbling those who talk too much, too often.

Rohl is not alone in this. We have seen it before from managers at that club. Declarations of dominance. Predictions of success. Statements that sound powerful in the moment and hollow in hindsight.

It is part of a culture that confuses noise with authority. The problem is that reality does not care about your press conferences. Reality cares about results.

And right now, the reality is simple.

Rohl is out of the cup. His team has dropped behind us in the title race and the only way he now fulfils his own declaration about silverware is by winning the league.

That is the corner he has painted himself into. That is the pressure he has created.

And it is entirely self-inflicted. Because none of this was necessary.

He could have ignored McCowan’s comments. He could have kept the focus on his own team. Rohl could have paid Celtic some respect before the cup game. Instead, he chose to lob another needless grenade.

And in football, saying more is often the quickest way to be exposed.

Sutton is right. Rohl should have kept his mouth shut.

Well, it’s too late now.

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