On the shortest day of the year, a game that burst only briefly into life. In the space of seven second-half minutes, from nothing and nowhere, things started to happen. Brighton took the lead. West Ham equalised. And then things stopped happening again.
There were, to be fair, some rousing moments in the closing stages. Crysencio Summerville, a second-half substitute, robbed the ball off Jan Paul van Hecke and sprinted towards the area, but his shot was blocked; Yankuba Minteh, another, was played through on the right and eventually slid the ball across goal where Vladimir Coufal, a third, running back to defend his goal, deflected it into the foot of the far post. And finally, in the fourth minute of stoppage time and with Brighton finishing strongly, Evan Ferguson, a fourth, set up Yasin Ayari, a fifth, for a shot that was well saved. But the primary impression will be of two teams that started a hectic rush of festive fixtures as if their primary motivation was to preserve energy for the other ones.
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