Julen Lopetegui was honest in his assessment of West Ham United’s 1-1 Premier League draw with Brighton & Hove Albion on Saturday.
The Hammers made it three top-flight games unbeaten with a hard-earned point against the Seagulls, recovering from a goal down to secure a point.
After a first half short on action, bar saved efforts from Jarrod Bowen and Kaoru Mitoma, the game burst into life after the interval as Mats Wieffer shot Brighton in front on 51 minutes, before Mohammed Kudus headed the hosts level seven minutes later.
Both teams then had decent opportunities to score, with Edson Álvarez and Crysencio Summerville going closest for the Irons, and Łukasz Fabiański making amends for his error which led to Wieffer’s opener by making crucial saves from Yasin Ayari and Julio Enciso.
Come the final whistle, Brighton had made 12 goal attempts to West Ham’s eleven, illustrating how closely fought the game had been, and Head Coach Lopetegui admitted his side got what they deserved on a day London Stadium paid tribute to Academy goalkeeper Oscar Fairs, who sadly passed away on 12 December, aged 15.
I think that we were better in the first half, then maybe in the second half they were better in some moments.
We had 15 very good minutes after we levelled the match. We could have scored the second goal, but they recovered and they had chances too.
So I think it was an equal match against a very strong team.
We have to highlight the commitment and the behaviour of the players.
[They showed those characteristics] until the end. We achieved one point - we wanted three - but we have to look forward to the next challenge.
We need to try to keep a positive feeling and this is a match that we have not lost. We now have a key [end to the] month as we look to that next challenge.
People talk about the classification and say that Brighton is doing very, very well.
They have five points more than us and it is not a big difference. I think that the little details are going to help us to increase our level, and improve our position in the classification too.
We showed a good reaction to their goal.
Not only to get the equaliser, but afterwards, we kept this reaction. We had a very good spell.
It is true that after that they changed and they recovered against our control. That is why we [made] other changes, and in the last moment, the last part of the match, we had a set-piece situation to score the second goal.
We had the chance, but it is true that they have two clear chances too and Łukasz did very well.
So that is why I talk about an equal match against a strong team.
Łukasz Fabiański has a strong mentality.
It was not easy for him because we know that he can do better in this action [for Brighton’s goal].
But the thing that he did very well is that after this action, he kept his mentality strong. He did very good work in the game to highlight this mentality.
You have to keep working and to keep focused.
To the fans, the message is that you are right that football is important. But there are times that is important to be together as a family. I wish all the best to all of our supporters at Christmas.
Today we had a very sad situation with remembering Oscar [Fairs, the 15-year-old West Ham United Academy goalkeeper who sadly passed away last week].
So we had to think about this kind of situation to give perspective sometimes.
We also have to say that we are going to come back with a big ambition [for the second half of the season] knowing that we can do better. We have to do better.
We have one point more than we got in the second part of last season, but we want more and we promise that we are going to do our best always to improve.
I am sure that the team is going to improve in the second part of the season, and to be happy with our fans.
