St. Mirren have been plunged into a footballing crisis just days before Celtic visit Paisley.
Neil Lennon’s Hoops take on the Buddies on Wednesday night in a re-arranged Premiership clash.
But Jim Goodwin’s men will be without two goalkeepers for the clash against the Champions – it was confirmed by the SFA on Friday.
The governing body published a statement confirming that Saints would be without their three first-team goalkeepers for the visit of Hibernian on Saturday.
It read: “The club informed us that two goalkeepers (Goalkeeper A and Goalkeeper B) have tested positive for COVID-19, confirmed by follow-up NHS tests.
“As a result, both players will be excluded from the squad for 10 days and pending the return of negative tests.
“In addition, after analysis of club GPS data, the local health board’s Health Protection Team also consider a third goalkeeper, Goalkeeper C, to be at potential risk of transmission given close proximity to team-mates.
“To mitigate the potential that Goalkeeper C – who returned a negative test – may have the virus in incubation, he will also be excluded as a precaution.”
It’s easy to work out what has happened
Given that goalkeepers train together in close proximity, it’s hardly surprising to find out that all the players in question play in nets.
We already know the identity of the two goalkeepers to test positive are Jak Alnwick and Dean Lyness. Third choice keeper Peter Urminsky will also sit out the game against Hibernian, but could be back for our visit.
Nevertheless, it is a pretty dire situation for the Buddies – who could barely have two tougher examinations in the coming days.
Cases of COVID are never nice to see and we wish Alnwick and Lyness a speedy and full recovery.
From a selfish point of view, we also hope that the Hoops can take advantage of the fragility in the Saints defence and canter to a comfortable win on Wednesday.
But it’s hard not to feel a great deal of sympathy with the Paisley side.
Imagine this happened to us on the eve of a derby.
In other news, Chris Sutton reckons that Celtic need to press ahead with strengthening their options at left-back
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