I'm not quite getting the sudden worrying about Fulham, I get the feeling people have seen them charge up the table where as we have not really moved which gives the false impression they are on a much better run of form than Villa and gaining on us quickly.
If you look at the last 10 games though (before which Fulham were sat 10th in the league and already only 5 points behind us)
Fulham W8 D2 L0 Pts26
Villa W8 D1 L1 Pts25
The reality is they have only taken 1 point more than us from their last 10 games (3 of them against us as well!) Or 3 points more over the last 20 games whilst on this crazy run of form people are talking about and we spent a few games without 2 of our most creative players.
I'm confident if we can avoid injuries we'll keep our run of form going, the critical games will be Wolves/Cardiff/Derby as we've struggled all season against the teams around us with Bruce's negative tactics setting up to play for the draw. Fulham/Cardiff will drop more points this season but not enough for us to get away with dropping 9 points against Wolves/Cardiff/Derby. Hopefully he's learnt this by now and comes out all guns blazing.
There is no doubt though that if we were to miss out Fulham are a better team now after a bad start than Cardiff and I would rather avoid them in playoffs.