The Hammers produced a solid defensive performance to get over the line against the in-form visitors.
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West Ham United had to dig deep to register a vital point at home against Brighton & Hove Albion. The Hammers produced a solid defensive performance to get over the line against the in-form visitors. Brighton have created a reputation for playing one of the best-attacking brands of football in the Premier League. They move the ball well and play an impressive high-pressing style of football, which can be difficult to deal with for most teams.
However, West Ham United did well to frustrate the well-drilled Brighton & Hove Albion side at home. After the goalless Premier League draw, Moyes gave an honest assessment of the result. “If you said to me at the start of the season that we’d take four points against our bogey team, I’d have taken that all day long. The other part of it is, of course, you want to perform better with the ball and play better. We defended really well again. We were resilient with what we had, which is a big part of football,” Moyes, quoted on the club’s website, said after the game.
He added: “The defensive boys played brilliantly. They really did. They did brilliantly well. I thought we played better in the first half with the ball than we did in the second half. We turned it over three or four times at the start of the second half and we weren’t having the ball. We were then nearly playing on scraps and counter-attacking, which wasn’t overly nice to watch, but it was a good point to get.”
Moyes then went on to speak about his side’s missed opportunities, as he particularly singled out a big chance which Tomas Soucek had. “Tomas Souček missed a really big chance for us to go a goal up and, recently, we’ve been taking those opportunities. We didn’t get it tonight. The chance we had right before half-time, the one from the wide free-kick, I think that one probably made me think ‘goodness me, we’re maybe not going to get anything tonight’,” he elaborated.
The West Ham manager also spoke about his changed line-up and how the incoming players performed. “We’ve had a lot of these boys [who came into the team] playing in the UEFA Europa League so most of them should have had a bit of [pitch] time and be ready, and most of them showed it. Players like Pablo Fornals, Dinos Mavropanos, Saïd Benrahma, Angelo Ogbonna and Ben Johnson have not played as much as others, and we had to make a few changes tonight. I actually think, against a good Brighton team who had to make changes as well, I think it was a good result,” he stated.
Moyes added: “It’s been a brilliant festive period. For us to win three and draw one game, it’s been a good period for us. We’re always looking to judge it on the performances and I didn’t really enjoy this one, but we got what I think was a hugely important result for us against one of the top teams in the country.”
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