West Ham Women picked up a vital point against a resistant Brighton & Hove Albion side with a 0-0 home draw easing their fears of relegation in the Women's Super League.

The point for Rehanne Skinner's side moved them seven points clear of bottom club Bristol City, after the Hammers dominated the chances throughout the 90 minutes.

And Skinner was optimistic after her side’s showing, saying: “I think overall I’m pleased with the performance and the grit and determination we showed throughout the course of it.

“I’m really pleased with the clean sheet and that’s something that’s really important to us, but on the balance of it and with the chances we had, we should have at least taken one of those.

“Probably our best one (chance) was from [Honoka] Hayashi, with a fantastic save from Sophie Baggaley so credit where credit is due there. But I think the points were there for the taking over the balance of the game and that’s something we’ll keep working towards.”

Baggaley had an inspired game for Brighton, which perhaps tells the story of the match. West Ham had 10 shots at goal - five on target - compared to Albion’s two on target, yet they still failed to find the net.

It seemed certain it wasn’t going to be West Ham’s day in front of goal when the keeper produced arguably one of the saves of the season to deny Hayashi's stunning volley which seemed destined for the top left corner.

Skinner downplayed a potential lack of confidence in front of goal, adding: “It's just one of those things. I don’t think we had the composure or ruthlessness in those moments, maybe we didn’t back ourselves as much as we could have.

“It’s lots of different people those chances fell to, it’s not the same person or anything. Collectively as a team we’ve worked hard, when we came into January we scored more goals at the start, it’s just dropped off a little bit, it happens.

“We just have to make sure we keep being really positive and we’re working on it in training.”

It was clear from the off West Ham and Skinner had done their homework on Albion’s defence. The Seagulls were unable to deal with a high attacking press and it should have paid dividends on multiple occasions.

“They’ve overplayed on a number of occasions and I think that’s an opportunity for us to take advantage of that, given the pace we had in the front line as well,” said Skinner.

“We just had to manage how their defensive midfielders tried to get on the ball and I think we were successful at it on a number of occasions.

“There were times, in the first half in particular, where we could have been even more aggressive with it which we spoke about at half-time, and then we got a few more turnovers in the final third in the second half, especially at the beginning, so that was a real positive for us."

Despite now being five games without a win in the WSL, Skinner’s side will take a lot of positives and with with just four games left, safety is clearly in West Ham’s hands.