David Moyes was delighted with West Ham United’s resilient and resolute defensive showing as the Hammers fought to a 0-0 draw with Brighton & Hove Albion.

London Stadium saw its first Premier League stalemate since September 2018 on Tuesday, but the scoreline only tells part of the story from a tightly contested outing. Both the Hammers and the Seagulls had chances to score, with the hosts seeing chances missed by Tomáš Souček and James Ward-Prowse. Brighton, meanwhile, could not find a way past Alphonse Areola, despite decent efforts from Adam Lallana, Jack Hinshelwood, and Pascal Groß.

With key first-team players missing due to the Africa Cup of Nations, injury, or illness, manager Moyes was particularly thrilled with how his starting XI adapted and competed against Brighton, praising the defensive players on show in east London.

The first point of 2024, added to the three wins at the end of December, means ten points from four matches in the festive period and 417 minutes without conceding.

“We’re always looking to judge it on the performances and I didn’t really enjoy this one, but we got what I think was a hugely important result for us against one of the top teams in the country,” said Moyes, adding: “If you said to me at the start of the season that we’d take four points against our bogey team, I’d have taken that all day long.

“The other part of it is, of course, you want to perform better with the ball and play better. We defended really well again. We were resilient with what we had, which is a big part of football.”

He continued: “The defensive boys played brilliantly. They really did. They did brilliantly well. I thought we played better in the first half with the ball than we did in the second half. We turned it over three or four times at the start of the second half and we weren’t having the ball. We were then nearly playing on scraps and counter-attacking, which wasn’t overly nice to watch, but it was a good point to get.”