We would have still beaten them imo.
For Julien, swap with Helander which would have seen Balogun come into the side. Love big Fil but no issues with Balogun.
For Forrest, see Roofe (assuming wide right). We brought in Barker as Roofe is out for injury. They replaced Forrest with Frimpong. No lover of slagging our own players but I know who's worse off with this swap, and that's even with the mentally challengeds slating Forrest.
For Eduoard, swap with Morelos and we would have went with Defoe or Itten up front.
For Bitton, swap with the fridge coming in, don't let them fool you that he's a first team player. Bitton has played 2 games in the league and wasn't even in the squad at St Johnstone.
For El Hamed, see above. Between being on their bench and starting is probably 50/50. Like losing Balogun after he's been in and out the team for Helander and Goldson.
For Christie, see Aribo. We've brought in Arfield who was been in superb form. I'm guessing they've been using Ntcham instead of Christie. Look who's being offered out to all sorts of Portugese teams and look at who they describe as a bit of a cart horse in Arfield. By their own mental heads, we should be weaker than them for this swap.
I've bolded the ones that we were also missing so cancels each other out essentially.
For their 6 players being out, you can only make a case really for them missing an out of form Eduoard, who's only scored a penalty in his last 6 league games I think it is, and at a push, Julien and Christie. Given they've got 4 first team strikers and 3 of them played on Sunday and Christie was replaced by someone they're wanting 8 figures for, you can only really point to Julien being their biggest miss (even though it's heavily rumoured he's fit and just fallen out with Lennon) and his back ups El Hamed and Bitton being out but they could have started a back 4 of Frimpong Ajer Duffy & Laxalt to combat the issue. Plus Julien HATES playing against Morelos.
Don't let them fool you into thinking they were depleted. Their subs alone tallied over £10m in transfer fees. For all the hearing of this "marvellous squad depth" that they have, it's really shown up the standard outwith their starting XI.
They are terrified and it's showing.
Like a house of cards indeed Mr King.
Edit: Forgot that Katic is injured so that replaces one of their squad player defenders as well, so another like for like member of the squad missing making it 3 out of their 6.