When does a stutter become a ­stumble? After a first home defeat of the season against Burnley on ­Boxing Day, the Championship high-flyers ­Sheffield United dropped two more home points against managerless West Brom.

Chris Wilder has been around long enough not to overreact but, with a trip to their promotion rivals Sunderland on New Year’s Day, this is shaping to be an uncomfortable period for his blunted Blades.

The Sheffield United manager was at pains to stress the positives after Karlan Grant cancelled out Andre Brooks’s opener and secured for the ­visitors a deserved point.

“The performance was ­bigger than the result,” Wilder said. “That’s maybe a bit of a daft thing to say but that’s how I feel. I told them that in the circle in the middle of the pitch at the end.

“That’s a team that’s stretched, that’s tired, that has some issues obviously but they went absolutely right to the end and wanted to win the game.

“Today for me what I learned about my team was so pleasing. I was so proud of how they went about it. We have to take stock and put it all into context and look at it and think: ‘We’re all right.’ They are a big club in this division, a big club still behind us. They might get their act together and go above us, I get that, but at the moment they’re not. A lot of clubs are behind us.”

Wilder is sufficiently ­disquieted, though, to be in the hunt for reinforcements.

With the takeover by COH Sports complete, he met the club’s new American owners last week and spelled out his desire for a couple of experienced additions to his squad in the January transfer window.

Stretched by injuries, the United bench had a kids’ club feel to it and the centre of defence is a ­priority. Harry Souttar, the ­Leicester loanee, has played his last game for the Blades after snapping his ­achilles tendon.

The impregnable defensive edifice that had gone nine games at ­Bramall Lane without coughing up a goal has now been breached three times in three days.

It might have been different had the home side been given a penalty in the 72nd minute when Callum O’Hare was blocked off in the area and sent sprawling by Ousmane ­Diakite. The referee, Stuart Attwell, saw no offence.

“I don’t think we are getting any decisions,” Wilder said. “If someone comes and barges someone out of the way anywhere else on the football field that’s a foul. What’s the difference? There isn’t one. He’s barged into the back of him and it’s a penalty.”

For the most part it was the Blades who made the running. Brooks’s opener in the 23rd minute came after a lovely interchange with ­O’Hare. Cashing in on some poor control from Diakite to pick up possession on the edge of the West Brom penalty area, Brooks passed to O’Hare, who returned the favour with a first‑time backheel for the midfielder to drill his shot past Alex Palmer in the West Brom goal. It was the 21-year-old academy product’s first senior goal.

But West Brom had their moments. Grant’s equaliser was instinctive and precise. Wearing his second shirt of the game after a nose bleed induced by a stray arm from the United ­midfielder Tom Davies, he thumped home a fine first‑time strike from outside the penalty area after Mikey Johnston’s shot had ­ricocheted into his path.

If substitute Rhian Brewster was guilty of missing a great chance late on for the Blades, then Tom Fellows was equally culpable for the visitors before the break.

After the destabilising midseason exit of manager Carlos Corberán to Valencia, it was a good point for the caretaker manager Chris Brunt on one of the Championship’s more testing road trips.

“We’ve had too many draws this season but it was important we got something here today,” Brunt said. “On another day we could have won it. On the whole I thought we deserved to.

“We’re very happy. We’d have been a little bit more happy if we had taken all three but they all stood up and were counted and that’s all you can ask. Hopefully that will give them a little bit more confidence. Now we get them ready to go again on New Year’s Day.”