Former Celtic star Kris Commons can sympathise with Dundee boss James McPake.
He just reckons the anxious boss should direct his Covid concerns at his own club rather than the SPFL.
McPake gave the league both barrels on Boxing Day after being forced to play with a threadbare squad against Aberdeen - with a four man bench made up of two goalkeepers, his 40-year-old assistant manager and a 17-year-old.
Commons reckons Dundee should have raised the issue long before now and if they agreed to the protocols McPake should question his own club rather than league figures.
And he believes there's one thing driving the insistence that games should be played: the nightmare scenario of last year when the season was curtailed and teams were relegated and crowned champions with games still outstanding.
Writing in his Daily Mail column, Commons said: "If Dundee are so appalled at having to play with such a threadbare squad, why did they agree to these rules and protocols in the first place?
"If they genuinely wanted to make significant changes to the way Scottish football is run at boardroom level, they should have stepped up to the plate at the start of the pandemic.
"That was the time to do it and really go for it. Instead, they were messing about with emails and a half-hearted attempt at league reconstruction.
"While the rest of Scottish football savoured the joys of broadband, Dundee were still caught somewhere between dial-up and a carrier pigeon.
"It's an episode which still makes me cringe at how embarrassing it all became.
"But, while I do sympathise with McPake, there is a bigger, more underlying point in all of this. This rule whereby games must go ahead if a team has 13 fit players is part of the problem. Who made 13 the magic number?
"What constitutes a 'fit' player? Is a 40-year-old assistant manager who retired five years ago as per Dundee's Dave Mackay yesterday really a 'fit' player?
"Really? Is that where we're going with this? Are those the levels of desperation and farce we will stoop to just in order to get games played?
"Because, make no mistake, that's what it all comes down to. There is such a clamour for games to be played come hell or high water.
"The SPFL are so utterly terrified at the prospect of having the same sort of doomsday scenario presented to them as that of 2020; and whether or not to call the season early."
