The comment was brief and yet it felt loaded. It came from David Moyes, after West Ham had rescued a draw against Brighton but lost too much ground all the same.
He had been asked about Declan Rice, who was pulling the strings between boxes in a club shirt for the first time since March 21.
‘We have missed him,’ Moyes admitted. ‘It was nothing to do with us, he got injured playing for England, not for West Ham. So we have had to put up with that. That has had an effect. It was good to get him back.’
There was exasperation in his tone, and you could empathise with that. West Ham are going through a rough patch at the wrong time, with a run of four points from five games that has left them out of the running for the top four and struggling to even get in the top six as well.
Within that skid, you have to look to Rice’s knee injury and wonder if it has been the greatest single cause.
It took only half an hour of Rice’s return against Brighton to appreciate fully what West Ham have been missing.
In that time he made four key interceptions and two big blocks on the edge of his area, before gradually reasserting himself as the pacemaker of the attacking unit, deciding when they stayed and when they went.
Not many players have such intuition, and fewer still have the technical qualities to turn what they read into what they write.
For Gareth Southgate, who was at the Amex Stadium, Rice ought to be one of the key components this summer with England. For West Ham, he is also the reason why they can still cling to hopes of locking down a place in the top six.
The risk is that they are conceding too much — the goal scored by Danny Welbeck began with West Ham errors — and the attacking indecision was glaring before Said Benrahma’s equaliser.
But with West Brom and Southampton still to play and Rice in their team, any panic around West Ham’s Europa League qualification should be kept in proportion.
For Brighton, there is little to play for as a collective — though uncertainty surrounds Welbeck’s future, with his contract up next month.
The former Arsenal man’s sixth goal of the season will help his cause in the forthcoming negotiations.
Manager Graham Potter said: ‘The time to sit down and find a solution is at the end of the season. We are happy with him.’
Source: m.allfootballapp.com