Fulham Head Coach Scott Parker was left waiting for his side’s first three points of the campaign after taking the lead with 13 minutes left on the clock, a hard one to take.
“Overall I’m a little bit disappointed,” Parker outlined. “Obviously when you get your nose in front in the game at 1-0 with 10 minutes to go you want to try and see the game out.
“In saying that, we had some big chances at that point to maybe see the game out even more, but it wasn’t meant to be today.”
But despite the underwhelming nature of a draw, there were plenty of positives for Parker to work with, especially in the second period of play.
“In the first half there were elements that we didn’t like, and we changed that at half time,” he continued. “In the second half it was really pleasing the way we looked, we looked a real threat.
“We added some speed into the team and looked really dynamic going forward and really caused Sheffield (United) a lot of problems.”
Aleksandar Mitrovic had a frustrating day at the office and was busy at both ends. After narrowly missing his penalty in the 57th minute, it was the Serbian who conceded a spot kick for the Blades with five minutes remaining. But Parker knows that this is a rare one-off.
“He has had a tough day there’s no denying that, he’ll be the first to admit that.
“A missed penalty and then two other chances which, by his standards, he usually puts in the net.
“This is a player that has scored a lot of penalties before and this is sport, and sometimes in sport you have bad days and some days it goes like that.
“What’s going to be the turning factor and the stature of the man is how he reacts, and I have no doubt he’ll react in a positive way and he’ll come back firing.”
There was a fresh look to the pre-international break side, with debuts for Tosin Adarabioyo and Ruben Loftus-Cheek as well as a first start for Ademola Lookman, and Parker was impressed with the way the new boys performed.
“I was really pleased with those boys,” he said. “These are players that have only been in the building a short space of time - certainly Ruben and Tosin, they’ve been with us for eight days.
“When you’re coming into a new environment you need to quickly pick up what I expect from players that come into this team and those boys did that very well.
“They brought their qualities to the game and I thought it was a team that I liked.”