At the end of the half-time interval here, referee Simon Hooper stood on the edge of the centre circle, arm aloft and waited to restart the game. No one else, though, appeared overly interested, groups of players huddled in casual conversation eventually, reluctantly, trudging back to the vague areas of the pitch where you might expect to find a Manchester United left-back or a West Ham centre-half. Do that all over again? Well alright, but only if we must.
It had been that sort of an afternoon at the London Stadium, the energy - or lack thereof - very much that of the last day of work before Christmas, only here the menial task of fulfilling a Premier League fixture could not be put off until the New Year.
And so instead, it fell to Lucas Paqueta, a glorious footballer to light up what to that point had been a miserable game with a wonderful assist, a stabbed pass off the outside of the boot teeing up the increasingly prolific Jarrod Bowen to score the decisive goal.
It broke a painfully poor Manchester United, Mohammed Kudus soon adding a second from another Paqueta pass as the Brazilian took his assist tally to five in the last two Premier League matches alone.
David Moyes will see a 2-0 victory over his former club as vindication for resting Paqueta, among others, for the midweek’s Carabao Cup exit at Liverpool. Some supporters may still have preferred a full crack at reaching a semi-final, but from a League position potentially as high as sixth at Christmas, the Hammers boss will consider this a first half of the season very well done.
The Scot launched an impassioned defence of his tenure on Friday, declaring himself a victim of expectations raised by his own success, but by any standard, a run of five wins and a draw from seven League matches since mid-November represents a fine return.
If the Anfield defeat felt like an opportunity missed, then for more than an hour here, another one seemed to be headed the same way.
A cautious, fragile United had been put under no sustained pressure, the visiting centre-back pairing of teenage debutant Willy Kambwala and Jonny Evans, who will be 36 next month, untested, while only Alejandro Garnacho’s wasteful finishing kept Erik ten Hag’s side from going into the break ahead.
Not for the first time in recent weeks, however, Moyes’s exceptional front-three proved simply too good to contain across the course of a full 90 minutes.
Bowen’s goal, a little fortuitous in coming back off Andre Onana, was the Englishman’s 11th in the League this season, fewer only than Erling Haaland. Intriguingly, too, it was another to arrive deep into a game, once he had been restored to his natural position running off the right-flank, rather than as the attack’s central focus point.
Kudus is in similarly rampant form. This was his fifth goal in seven matches and another finished with such clinical nerve as he delayed his shot to make space outside Evans before squeezing home to confirm another statement victory for a team that have already beaten Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham this term.
