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, one of 10 second-half substitutes, dispossessed Jan Paul van Hecke and sprinted towards the area, but his shot was blocked; Yankuba Minteh, another, slid the ball across goal where the defender Vladimir Coufal, a third, deflected it on to the foot of the far post.
