By Wayne Veysey | Chief correspondent | goal.com
When the shadows begin to close in on the Premier League season, a point for Manchester United at a Craven Cottage that threatened to rock off its creaking hinges may come to be seen as a valuable one.
So vibrant and committed were Fulham on Sunday that the solid foundations carefully laid by Roy Hodgson show no signs of being bulldozed on Mark Hughes’ watch.
The hosts, whose compact, atmospheric home on the Thames seems to imbue the players with the kind of extra powers once the preserve of Southampton at the Dell, twice came from behind and even kept out a penalty cruelly awarded for Damien Duff merely kneeing the ball a couple of inches into his own hand.
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The moral high ground was already theirs by the time Brede Hangeland sent a last-gasp header crashing into Edwin van der Sar’s net to cancel out his own unfortunate stab into the Fulham goal moments earlier.
As unfortunate as Duff was to concede a penalty, Nemanja Vidic was lucky that referee Peter Walton did not point to the spot after he got up close and personal with Moussa Dembele’s shirt.
United played their part in a nose-to-nose showdown in which, in the best Premier League tradition, neither side were willing to blink first.
After the visitors had pummelled Fulham in the early skirmishes, Hughes’ came back off the ropes and responded with a few well directed punches of their own, enough for United’s spell at their hoodoo ground to now read one league point gained in three seasons.
Credit is due to Fulham for pressing and harrying United with great intensity in the last three-quarters of the game. Hughes’ team refused to meet their doom and, led by the effervescent Bobby Zamora, always offered a threat to the visitors’ goal.
It was the backline that was the weakest link in United’s chain. Sir Alex Ferguson’s team won three consecutive Premier League titles based on the Vidic-Rio Ferdinand-Patrice Evra-Edwin van der Sar axis complimented by the versatility of Wes Brown, John O’Shea and the more infrequent appearances of Jonny Evans and Gary Neville.
Strikers win games and defences win titles, goes the refrain. By that logic, United are less well equipped than they were during their 2007-2009 period of dominance.
The manner in which Zamora monstered Evans will do nothing for United fans worried that he is not the solution to the questions posed by Ferdinand’s increasingly lengthy absences.
Zamora’s height, upper body strength, technique and increasing confidence in his ability to manoeuvre centre-halves where they don’t want to go was a textbook lesson in centre-forward play.
The new England targetman was also canny enough to realise that Evans is the junior of United’s second-choice centre-half pairing and attached himself to the Irishman’s left-sided station.
It was the key to Fulham gaining a foothold on a gripping encounter after the Paul Scholes Appreciation Society gained new members with his latest masterful finish and early command of the midfield.
But, just as Scholes and United faded, so Fulham and Zamora grew in strength and belief and by the time the whistle blew on a rousing finale, Evans’ reputation had taken a dent.
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