Hammers minutes away from least ‘smash and grab’ smash and grab ever at Brighton | OneFootball

West Ham came within minutes of completing a Nuno Espirito Santo masterclass at Brighton in what was perhaps their most complete performance of a troubled season.

Such was the extent to which the Hammers had shut down Brighton’s attack until the closing minutes that even the temptation to describe the victory that Jarrod Bowen’s superb finish from a tight angle appeared to have secured as a ‘smash and grab’ would have felt unfair.

Smash and grab suggests a degree of good fortune that simply wasn’t present in a West Ham performance they were delivering to the absolute letter of Nuno’s commands.

Brighton didn’t have a shot on target until the 90th minute. They then had four in the last minute of the 90 and injury time, including two in quick succession from Georginio Rutter, the second of which thumped into the back of the net to break West Ham hearts.

One of the dafter VAR quirks is the way any kind of handball – even one that wouldn’t constitute an offence by any other player in any other spot at any other time – will cause a goal to be disallowed if it connects directly to that goal. As such, Alphonse Areola would actually have been better off letting Rutter’s first attempt in. That would have been disallowed.

Instead, the ball was kept alive by Jan Paul van Hecke, and worked back to Rutter to fire home. We grow so, so weary of the myriad ways in which VAR just really doesn’t make sense, but we’re here now and no amount of sighing or pointing out how little sense so much of it makes is going to get that toothpaste back in the tube.

It won’t even count as an error, because this was entirely the correct decision, as it would have been to disallow Rutter’s first strike, even though the goal he eventually scores a few seconds later couldn’t possibly happen without that first attempt on goal, which was a perfectly legal attempt on goal, because it didn’t go in.

Which is, of course, the most damning thing of all. Any system of officiating can look foolish when mistakes are made; it takes something really special to leave you scratching your head when it works exactly as it’s meant to.

It was desperately cruel on West Ham, who for 89 minutes had delivered a near-perfect performance. Each member of the back three was immense, with Jean-Clair Todibo’s continuing return to the status of something approaching a reliable and effective footballer increasingly encouraging. Konstantinos Mavropanos will probably spend almost no time reflecting on the 96 minutes of flawless defending he contributed to this game, and acres of time reflecting on the late header he sent narrowly wide that would have taken West Ham to the victory that on balance they deserved.

Such is life. And cruel injury-time levellers are part of life, especially when it involves late-goal specialists Brighton who could themselves have really rubbed it in by pinching all three points in the wild, frantic finish that followed a game West Ham had controlled – largely without the ball – so carefully for so long.

It’s a result that leaves West Ham still in the bottom three but one that offers so much hope that better times can be around the corner. There is now at least a clarity of purpose about them under Nuno that was entirely lacking before.

They were deeply disappointing in the 2-0 home defeat to crisis-addled Liverpool, but that is the only Premier League defeat in six games that have shown plenty of reasons to think they can get out of trouble. Home wins over Newcastle and Burnley as well as hard-earned away points at Bournemouth, Manchester United and Brighton have shown both the aptitude and application necessary to steer West Ham out of immediate danger.

For Brighton, meanwhile, just a supremely Brighton result. This is always a team seemingly capable of any result at any time against any opponent. The fact the last 60 seconds of this game could have produced any result shouldn’t really have come as a surprise.