West Ham United ... 1  Everton ... 0  As the nights get shorter, Walter Smith's face grows longer. Though he and his Everton team sought a positive response last night to their recent barren run, they fell to a deflected goal and dropped closer to the Premiership trap door. The defeat means the Merseysiders have only one win and eight goals from their past 13 league games.

Smith put out a team with a more positive shape than his hosts' and they took more than an equal share of the first half, but in the end you could hardly argue with defeat, even if it came from a deflection that Trevor Sinclair could not have intended .

West Ham started the second half much more positively and threatened a couple of times before taking the lead. There was a touch of luck about it, but it was the kind of luck that comes with taking defenders on and getting midfielders into the area. When Nigel Winterburn passed inside to Joe Cole, there seemed little threat. But the young Hammer cut inside to find space for a shot that Sinclair diverted with, his head, past the helpless Simonsen.

WEST HAM: James, Schemmel (Garcia 81), Dailly, Pearce, Repka, Winterburn, Sinclair, Cole, Labant, Kanoute (Defoe 84), Di Canio. Subs Not Used: Hislop, Minto, Kitson. Goals: Sinclair 59.

EVERTON: Simonsen, Pistone, Stubbs, Weir, Unsworth, Alexandersson (Gravesen 68), Blomqvist, Gemmill, Carsley (Linderoth 68), Campbell (Ginola 63), Radzinski. Subs Not Used: Gerrard, Clarke. Booked: Gemmill, Blomqvist, Pistone.

Referee: B Knight (Orpington).