They were still good enough to beat the team in second place, and good enough to have a player come off the bench who would be in our first team every week.
For the sake of argument, if we say Celtic and Motherwell first teams are equal right now, Celtic still have sufficient resources to have equally strong replacements for their first 11. We don't - and unless we are really lucky with injuries and suspensions, it will catch up with us.
If we can do what Dundee Utd. did when they won the league using only 14 players, perhaps it's still possible, but games like today are something we really need to take points from.