Brede Hangeland says that Fulham have lost none of the spirit that carried them to the Europa League final last year despite losing Roy Hodgson to Liverpool.

The Norwegian defender, who scored at both ends in Fulham’s entertaining draw with Manchester United yesterday, believes Mark Hughes can take his new side forward and insists that the Whites’ late fightback yesterday shows the team spirit forged over the last couple of seasons at Craven Cottage is still very much intact.

There is no reason why we should lose our team spirit because we changed manager. Towards the end against United our team spirit was every bit as good as it has been for the last couple of years.

We came back again at Craven Cottage as we have done many times. It was a great feeling to be part of that and I’m confident Mark Hughes can lead us in the right direction.

The determination in the dressing room is the same every season. It’s more for those people around the club to make up stories about what is going to happen when we change manager. As players you always try and do your best and you have in mind what you have done last year and the year before that.

Hangeland says the main change in the month that Hughes has been at the helm is that Fulham have been a little more ambitious.

Now we get at teams a bit more. We did that yesterday a bit more against United than we have done in the past against good teams, even at home.

We used to concede ground earlier and let the opposition play whereas now we press high and take the game to them. It worked at times and other times not so well but I’m sure we’ll get better as we get time to work on things.

I think we knew already before we changed manager that on our day we can play well against most teams and we showed that again yesterday. We should have respect for those good teams but not have any fear.