One leading football statistical analysis website summed up West Ham United’s performance in Friday’s 1-0 Premier League defeat at Brighton & Hove Albion.
The Hammers, it said, ‘dominated possession’ and ‘were effective at creating chances from set pieces’ but also that they were ‘poor at finishing’.
Brighton may well receive praise for the way they defended in ending their own five-match winless run, but the statistics would suggest this was a case of West Ham losing the game rather than Brighton winning it.
West Ham’s ‘expected goals’ – a recently-introduced statistical measure of the quality of chances created and conceded – for the game were 1.44, while Brighton’s were just 1.16, but it was Chris Hughton’s team, and in particular Glenn Murray, who were the more clinical and scored the game’s only ‘real’ goal.
Manuel Pellegrini’s side had 17 goal attempts at the Amex – just six fewer than in their victories over Everton and Manchester United and draw with Chelsea combined – but only four of those attempts were threating Mat Ryan’s net.
Eleven of those goal attempts were from inside the Brighton penalty area, so it was not as if the Hammers were simply firing pot-shots at the Australian’s goal from long range.
Instead, from decent positions, West Ham’s players either shot or headed high and/or wide or saw their efforts blocked by a resilient, determined home defence, as happened on no fewer than six occasions.
Even before Murray put Brighton in front, Pellegrini’s team had weathered a slow start to create three of the game’s opening four chances.
After Brighton’s Anthony Knockaert had shot straight at Lukasz Fabianski, Marko Arnautovic had a shot blocked, Fabian Balbuena headed off-target from a corner and Pedro Obiang saw his close-range prod deflected out for a corner.
Having fallen behind on 25 minutes, West Ham continued to create chances, although they failed to seriously test Ryan all night long.
Into the second half and the Hammers were again wasteful after getting into very good areas in the final third.
After the game, Pellegrini lamented ‘three clear-cut chances’ that went begging and all three occurred in the second half, during which West Ham enjoyed a season-high 68.6 per cent of the ball and spent more than one-third of the time in Brighton’s third of the pitch.
The first fell to Balbuena, who stole behind his marker but could only glance Felipe Anderson’s wickedly dipping corner wide of the far post with his head.
The second, with 15 minutes to play and West Ham preparing to launch a sustained late bombardment of the Brighton goal, fell to substitute Lucas Perez, but the Spaniard failed to connect properly.
And the third, on 90 minutes and with Chris Hughton’s team retreating ever deeper as they clung onto their slender lead, saw Arnautovic fire Lucas’s cut-back over the crossbar from just seven yards after yet more attractive build-up play.
As both manager and captain Mark Noble said after the final whistle, the match was a tale of missed opportunities, rather than one where the Hammers had been outplayed or out-thought.
However, both know West Ham will need to be more clinical when Tottenham Hotspur visit London Stadium after the international break.