It will not cause heart tremors among the bookmakers who have already decided to pay out on Fulham for the Nationwide League first division title, but for the first time this season they have failed to win in two successive home matches.

They remain ten points clear of Bolton Wanderers but had great difficulty breaking down a Sheffield United team, who harried, annoyed and frustrated them to a first home draw of the campaign and moved up to eighth themselves.

“We worked hard this week on the way to play against them and it worked,” Neil Warnock, the United manager, said. “It was the least effective I’ve seen them.”

Plenty of sides have tried the same tactics and left with nothing, but United, assisted by the deteriorating state of the Craven Cottage pitch, which may help other visiting teams, were just that little bit more determined than most.

So intense, in fact, was their application that two of their own players confronted each other in the second half as Fulham finally began to exert some sustained pressure.

Georges Santos appeared to head-butt Michael Brown in recriminations that followed a near miss by the home side, and was immediately substituted. “That was just passion for the game,” Warnock said. “To have a go at each other shows how much they had left.”

In the end, the visitors’ tactics, though not pretty, proved effective, although such an outcome had not looked likely when Fulham took the lead after 17 minutes as Louis Saha controlled a pass expertly from Fabrice Fernandes and prodded the ball into the path of Luis Boa Morte, in space on the left. He rounded Simon Tracey and rolled in his sixteenth goal of the season.

But Fulham were not permitted another shot on goal in the first half, while United came close through Peter Ndlovu’s curling free kick and a long-range effort from Lee Sandford before Laurent D’Jaffo glanced in Brown’s free kick four minutes before half-time.

After that, the visitors returned to their time-wasting, nudging and scrapping, although Fulham twice came close to snatching a winner.

After 74 minutes, Karlheinz Riedle brought down a high cross from the left, turned past Sandford and shot powerfully for the far corner, only for Tracey to leap to his right and clutch the ball and, four minutes later, Fernandes put Boa Morte through but Tracey blocked his low shot.

A Fulham winner would have been hard on United, especially Nick Montgomery, 18, who marked Lee Clark out of the game, and could even have scored a late winner with a curling shot that Maik Taylor saved. “We had to laugh when the sponsors made Clark man-of-the-match, because Nick Montgomery had done excellently against him,” Warnock said. “I thought Michael Brown was the best player on the pitch.”

Speaking of the pitch, Fulham have invested in the team and hope to do the same for the ground — Hammersmith and Fulham Council meet on February 27 to decide on their planning application for improvements to Craven Cottage — but the playing surface has not the resources lavished on it that their football requires. “The pitch is boggy and it’s hard to get the ball under control,” Andy Melville, the Fulham captain, said. “Everyone is down in the dressing-room, but we battled well and we are one point closer.”

FULHAM (4-4-2):
M Taylor — S Finnan, A Melville, K Symons, R Brevett — B Goldbaek (sub: K Riedle, 62min), L Clark, S Davis, F Fernandes — L Saha, L Boa Morte.

Substitutes not used: M Hahnemann, N Sahnoun, P Moller, A Neilson. Booked: Goldbaek, Brevett.

SHEFFIELD UNITED (3-5-2):
S Tracey — S Murphy, L Sandford, K Curle — L Kozluk, N Montgomery, M Brown, G Santos (sub: P Jagielka, 69), P Ndlovu (sub: D Kelly, 90) — G Uhlenbeek, L D’Jaffo.

Substitutes not used:
P Suffo, A Woodward, F Talia Booked: Santos, Curle, Ndlovu.

Referee: G Frankland.