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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
Sport
Malik Ouzia

West Ham: Angelo Ogbonna laments a festive game too far as Hammers run out of steam against Brighton

Divorced, beheaded, died. Injured, AFCON, tired.

Just as the mnemonic has schoolchildren across the country reeling off the fates of Henry VIII's unfortunate six by heart, so too the act of scrolling through a Premier League squad list to tick off the absentees is becoming second nature.

Another night of football to round off the festive period brought further unnecessary evidence there is simply too much of this stuff, another set of line-ups more notable for those who were missing rather than playing, and their expanding repertoire of alibis.

At London Stadium, a visibly knackered West Ham clung on to earn the goalless draw which keeps them sixth against a depleted Brighton in what looked a game too far for both. It came at the end of an attritional run, the first half of the campaign spent competing on home and European fronts without the same depth as the Premier League's loftiest elite.

David Moyes is frustrated by the AFCON calls-up for his players (Action Images via Reuters)

Brighton's solution, often, has been to turn to youth; David Moyes's, to rely on a core of senior players that, until a week or two ago, had enjoyed a remarkably clean bill of health.

Here, though, across the two squads, 16 first-team players were missing for one or other reason of suspension, ailment, affliction and international duty. That ought to be an extraordinary number, but this season has become the norm, as Brentford, Manchester United, Chelsea, Tottenham and Newcastle will attest.

Little, though, sums up the strain on the modern footballer like the predicament of the two teams' respective star wingers in Kaoru Mitoma and Mohammed Kudus, both of whom are headed to tournaments on different continents in the middle of the season while nursing hamstring problems.

In Mitoma's place on Brighton's left wing started James Milner, who tomorrow turns 38, while Kudus's usual patch was occupied, if nothing else, by Pablo Fornals, and how the pair were missed in a game desperately lacking for spark.

West Ham were marginally the better side before the break, though Pascal Gross missed the period's best chance when heading Milner's cross straight at Alphonse Areola. Roles were reversed after the interval, Areola making a string of saves to keep out the visitors, but Tomas Soucek skewing wide when presented an opening inside six yards by a kind deflection off Billy Gilmour.

Jarrod Bowen failed to register a shot on target. (Getty Images)

If the sense before kick-off was that both teams would have shaken hands on a draw, then by full-time you wondered whether either had the energy. Angelo Ogbonna, West Ham's captain on the night, said: "We were a bit tired, we couldn't push. In December and over Christmas we've had a lot of games and a lot of injuries. We couldn't even rotate so for us it was important to at least get a point."

The most recent part of that run has actually been relatively kind to the Hammers, who have played "only" three times in 11 days since the weekend before Christmas, so much so that Moyes argued afterwards he would have taken a day's less recovery to have Kudus and Nayef Aguerd available before their AFCON departures. Prior to that, though, December had brought six matches in 18 days.

"It's been a fair programme for this time of year for what it could be, but our programme before that wasn't overly fair," Moyes said. "It's the first time this season we've looked really jaded and tired."

For once, the schedule now offers due relief, at least for those not involved in AFCON or the Asian Cup, and provided Moyes's men can see off (or lose to) Bristol City in the FA Cup third round on Sunday, lest their fortnight's league break be interrupted by a replay.

No one, though, will be watching this one again in a hurry.

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