Sorry Roberto, you won’t get much sympathy for all your injuries if your team keep playing like this.

Other than a mention in passing, observers from further afield won't be saying, ‘Look at Brighton. They lost key players, they’ve got all five wingers out of action and they have hardly got any defenders’.

Or that they have just tackled unprecedented schedule of matches, not necessarily for the number of games but for the demands and intensity.

We heard last week all about Tottenham’s injuries, about their fatigue levels.

The focus on West Ham was the players who couldn’t play on Tuesday night.

Brighton? They just get on with it. Find another teenager, get another ex-England man to turn back the clock, make up another plan.

Five days after hitting poor old injury-ravaged and leg-weary Spurs for four, they produced a display of tactical sophistication and of confidence and composure to have West Ham looking like the away team.

Which, of course, is actually not a situation with which West Ham are uncomfortable.

But they also kept the back door shut, maintained a clean sheet with just two notable alarms and really should have added another win to their unbeaten record at the London Stadium.

That they didn’t was partly down to Hammers goalkeeper Alphonse Areola, who made saves from Jack Hinshelwood, Pascal Gross, Danny Welbeck, Joao Pedro and Adam Lallana.

There is an argument he should not have been permitted to make at least two of those stops.

His best was low to his left to block from Welbeck in similar style to the way Guglielmo Vicario thwarted the same striker last week.

He plunged to his right to save from Lallana late on.

And he stayed where he was to keep out Gross and Joao Pedro, both of whom should really have forced him to move one way or the other, as well as Hinshelwood.

Gross headed the best chance of the first half straight at the keeper after his great run was expertly picked out by James Milner while others intelligently dragged defenders away.

Joao Pedro danced inside two, three, maybe even four defenders as he cut in from the left in the second half.

But, having opened the angle, he then drilled his shot at the keeper.

Jakub Moder lofted a half-volley over on the run as he arrived at the far post and also sent in a delicious low cross for which there were no takers.

Gross saw his header drop between the far post and substitute Evan Ferguson and Ferguson himself shot wide after fabulous footwork.

Take a point now? Many Albion fans would have answered in the affirmative going into the game with Igor and Lewis Dunk added to the list of absentees.

Especially given West Ham’s recent form and the way their deep-lying style and rapid counter-attacks are a method which has caught out the Seagulls before.

But who was settling for a point as the second half progressed and the visitors were urged forward by their fans in a corner close – or relatively close – to the goal so ably protected by Areola?

In the end, it felt like two points dropped – and the faces of the Albion players heading away from the changing room and home some while after full-time emphasised that.

But the coaching staff looked happier as they went past. And maybe that is because there was also a lot gained.

With reference to the opening line of this piece, I don’t think Roberto De Zerbi wants sympathy.

He wants a fair hearing when people start pointing out his team don’t win as many league games as they would like to.

He wants his players back, of course.

And what has been obvious in the last two games is the benefit of him having significant time to work with his team on the training pitch.

They gained another tactical option, with Pervis Estupinan on the left of what was usually a three but adapted to a four when Jack Hinshelwood dropped in.

Other gains? Jan Paul van Hecke as the tower of authority at the heart of that three.

Adam Webster back again. And Hinshelwood’s part after Webster went off.

The clean sheet, of course, is something gained.

Better to keep it when you score nil than when you score four.

It was only seriously threatened twice.

When Jason Steele saved a James Ward-Prowse volley straight out of the coaching manual.

And when Tomas Soucek ignored the coaching manual to club a shot wide with his right foot when the flick from Jarrod Bowen to find him in front of goal demanded a hooked finish with his left.

But is worth remembering the clean sheet was potentially threatened every time West Ham won the ball back in their own half, with Albion committing men forward and the hosts – most notably Bowen – ready to exploit space.

They were alert on such occasions and their build-up play, while maybe more deliberate and considered than some would have liked at times, was designed to limit those counter-raid opportunities.

Dunk will return from his ban when league action resumes but most of, if not all, the injuries will still be there.

But it has felt for a while that all the hurdles being put in Albion’s way in recent weeks can make them stronger.

They can give some players chance to be better and force the team into finding new solutions.

They are doing so, which is why their fans clapped them off at West Ham and why they did not look, think or play like a makeshift, injury-ravaged team. Far from it.