Danny Röhl’s ego keeps writing cheques that his talent can’t cash.

Danny Röhl has a problem. And the problem Danny Röhl has is that his mouth keeps getting in front of his brain. Or maybe that’s not the problem at all. Maybe his brain and his mouth are perfectly in sync, and what’s in his head is simply wrong.

Either way, he did it again yesterday.

He has offered a major hostage to fortune. Worse than that, he’s speaking in a way that most of his own supporters will find incomprehensible.

He said that if performances start to be matched by results, his side will be very difficult to stop in the title race. That, mind you, comes before tonight’s game against Aberdeen.

The problem with his comments are obvious. Most Ibrox fans won’t have a clue what he’s talking about, because their performances have, in fact, been entirely consistent with their results. In short, the performances have been largely dreadful, and the results have followed accordingly.

So, what he’s actually saying is self-contradictory.

If results more closely start following performances, theirs is a club that could find itself in even deeper trouble than it already is. They sit third behind Celtic and Hearts. They’re out of the cup. And whilst he may want to move past such uncomfortable realities, and the scrutiny that comes with them, he will find it very difficult to do so if his wish here is granted.

This guy is delusional. I’ve listened to him a number of times now, and he seems to live in his own world. If he thinks that the way that team is playing is impressive, then I don’t know what he’s watching.

He sounds an awful lot, at times, like Wilfried Nancy or Russell Martin, especially when he talks about seeing improvements in training and progress in the number of chances created on the pitch. The reality is much simpler than that.

You can create all the chances you want, but you have to start putting some of them on target. You can put as many on target as you like, but you have to start putting them in the net. And you’ll have to keep them out at the other end for any of it to matter at all.

The Celtic side they faced at Ibrox in the league was stretched enough.

The one they played for a place at Hampden was one of the weakest sides we’ve fielded at that stadium in years.

Yet once we figured out their tactics, which took Martin O’Neill 45 minutes in the first of those two games, they didn’t score against us for the 165 minutes that followed. That covers the second half of that game and the entirety of the cup tie, including extra time.

So, what, in God’s name, is Röhl talking about when he says they will be “hard to stop”?

O’Neill changed things during a KitKat and coffee break and shut them down completely.

It’s not just that O’Neill was able to do that. He did it with a depleted side in that second game, which makes it an obvious blueprint for others. In the cup tie, he put Liam Scales on the left, allowing him to drift centrally when the Ibrox side attacked. Suddenly, their two strikers were facing three defenders instead of going man for man.

It worked perfectly. If Aberdeen make a similarly simple adjustment, even something as basic as adding an extra central defender, they may well do the same. If that happens, they drop points, the gap widens, and the pressure increases.

Röhl does not seem to understand how transparent his tactical approach looked against Celtic. He does not seem to grasp how quickly Celtic broke it. He appears to think that because his team restricted Celtic to very little in the second game, he had found something.

Celtic limited themselves in attack in that match. The absence of Callum McGregor mattered. However, that is not the story of those games. The real story is simple: his team could not score from open play.

Röhl had 120 minutes in the cup tie to find a goal. He could not do it. In the league, he will get 90 per game, plus injury team which even at the SFA’s most generous won’t give him more than 10 more minutes to get things right, and there is no second chance through penalties. When the whistle goes, the points are gone.

Even if Aberdeen offer nothing going forward, if they can restrict the Ibrox side to long-range efforts and hopeful balls into a crowded box, a nil-nil draw becomes a huge result for them. It is also a huge result for Hearts. And for Celtic.

Increasingly, teams in this league are no longer intimidated by this Ibrox side.

Indeed, Röhl himself hinted at the contradiction. On the one hand, he said he would take results over performances, which is an admission that performances are not good enough. Yet, on the other hand, he continues to talk as if the performances in dropped points matches deserved more.

However, Ibrox fans do not recognise that version of events.

Moreover, it probably was not wise to label every remaining game a “cup final” either.

So, thisBecause that only invites an uncomfortable reminder: when the actual cup final arrives this season, his team will not take part. Indeed, one of those performances he praised led directly to that absence. His side played 120 minutes without scoring and never seriously tested the Celtic goalkeeper.

This is where Röhl is now.

A manager who is already under pressure, and who is now talking himself into deeper trouble. He talks about dominance where none exists. He talks about progress that does not show in results, the league table, or the latter stages of the cup.

That disconnect is becoming impossible for their fans to ignore, and if he keeps going like this, it will not just frustrate supporters. It will turn them.

The more of it, the better; that’s what I say.

The old wisdom is that you should never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.

But that doesn’t mean you cannot marvel at them.

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