Kudus slips back against failing Brighton but West Ham desperate for Christmas boost | first division

On the shortest day of the year, a game that came to life only briefly. Seven minutes into the second half, out of nowhere, things started happening. Brighton took the lead. West Ham tied. And then things stopped happening again.

To be fair, there were some exciting moments in the final stages. Crysencio Summerville, one of 10 substitutes in the second half, dispossessed Jan Paul van Hecke and ran into the area, but his shot was blocked; Yankuba Minteh, another, slid the ball over the goal, where defender Vladimir Coufal, a third, deflected it to the foot of the far post.

Finally, in the fourth minute of stoppage time and with Brighton finishing strongly, Evan Ferguson, fourth substitute, who moments before had missed a cross from Pervis Estupiñán with the goal apparently at his mercy, set up Yasin Ayari, fifth, for a shot that I was well saved.

“In the second half we invested everything and normally we should come out winners on the field, but what is normal in football?” said Fabian Hürzeler, the Brighton manager.

“It was an even match,” said his counterpart, Julen Lopategui. “We were better in the first half and they were better in the second.”

It is a crude definition of equality. The Spaniard insisted his team had produced “a quality game against a quality team” but his position remains under threat and will hardly be strengthened by the decision to switch to a back five midway through the second half that precipitated the Brighton's strongest streak.

But the lasting impression was of two teams launching a frantic rush of holiday games as if their primary motivation was to preserve energy for each other. In the first half, only West Ham's Jarrod Bowen and Brighton's João Pedro seemed willing to give life to the game, with Bowen being the only one who also seemed capable. They both ran at defenders, forced them to commit, caused moments of panic and confusion, but the Brazilian had a habit of keeping the ball until the confusion spread to himself as well.

In the 22nd minute, Kaoru Mitoma's volley, after a cross from João Pedro, was saved, in the 34th, Bowen's cross hit the ankle of Lewis Dunk and went wide and that was the closest it came in the first half to reach an outstanding moment.

Both teams featured summer signings from Germany who made late debuts in the full league, although neither Brajan Gruda nor Niclas Füllkrug did much to make them memorable. Lopategui said Füllkrug is “off the pace” and “not in his best form”, and the good news is that it would be difficult to describe the £27m striker's performance as disappointing. The bad news is that it would be just as difficult to describe its almost completely drab display as anything else. It ended in the 57th minute when he was replaced by Summerville and within seconds West Ham scored.

Brighton had taken the lead in the 51st minute when Estupinan's long cross from the left tempted Lukasz Fabianski off his line only for Dunk to win cleanly. He nodded to Mats Wieffer, who calmly deflected him into the nearest corner.

Seven minutes later, the home team equalized after Bowen passed from the halfway line, played with Dunk and the returning Joel Veltman and shot from inside the box. Bart Verbruggen pushed it away from the goal but into the head of Mohammed Kudus, who smashed it right behind him. The goalscorer celebrated by sitting on a hand-carved Ghanaian stool; One of the few moments that got fans out of their seats was a player sitting in one of them.

For Brighton, this was their fifth game without a win, while West Ham remain in 14th place and are frustratingly inconsistent. Hürzeler described the last few weeks as “a circle of bad experiences and disappointments” that will only end when they “recover the winning mentality, recover the ability to defend.” A change of fortune will be high on both teams' Christmas lists; this, however, was simply apathetic.