Brede Hangeland chose to take the positives from Fulham’s draw at Norwich this afternoon – highlighting an improved defensive display as a reason to be cheerful.

The Fulham captain braved an Achilles injury to line up at the heart of the Fulham defence despite being substituted at half time during the defeat by Manchester United last weekend and was delighted that Martin Jol’s side managed to withstand a late onslaught from the Canaries to record their first clean sheet since November.

I’m very pleased we didn’t concede a goal – it’s been too long since we kept a clean sheet so that’s good. We obviously would’ve liked to win this game and I thought, looking back on it, we should have done a little bit better with all our possession and created some more pieces, but I suppose we’re quite happy to take a point home.

Like his manager, Hangeland was disappointed that Fulham weren’t able to convert their dominance of possession into a few more clear cut chances.

I thought we played well up to a certain point. We didn’t really ask too many questions of their goalkeeper so that’s something to work on. We looked solid as a team and we didn’t concede any goals so that’s a positive.

We’ll take any points we can get. A lot of teams around us lost today so we’ve gone one more point ahead of a few of the teams towards the bottom of the table.

The Norwegian international is now looking forward to recuperating over the course of a two-week break before Fulham return to action with a tough test against Stoke City at Craven Cottage on February 23. Hangeland hopes to have fully recovered from the Achilles injury that put his participation at Carrow Road in doubt.

I’ll take a break as I’ve been struggling with an injury for the past few days so I’ll need a few days to recover probably, so hopefully these two weeks now will do us a lot of good and we’ll be firing on all cylinders in two weeks time. There’s some injuries you can play with if you are willing to take a little bit of pain and that was the case today.