Mohamed Al Fayed, the chairman of Fulham, may be eccentric, but he knows more than anyone the value of a luxury hamper. And so, armed with the promise of £5,000 of caviar and smoked salmon for each player should the club escape relegation, he delivered the prematch pep talk. It worked, too. Salivating, the Fulham players emerged to a stadium stoked with passion and noise and proceeded to run rings around a muted Birmingham City side. Maybe the visiting team knew about the hampers; they certainly cast more envious glances than decent passes.

“It’s God helping us, I hope,” Al Fayed said. “You see the players have a fantastic will to win today. I told them a lot of things. I fired them up. I told them that if we go down they are down with us. But they are fantastic boys and I’m sure we are going to have a good season next season. Roy Hodgson is human and has a fantastic touch with the players and I think he has done his best so I am encouraging him also. He will have a hamper.”

Hodgson, appointed to keep Fulham in the Barclays Premier League following disappointing results and performances under Lawrie Sanchez, said he did not mind his chairman’s involvement in team matters.

“I don’t mind that, I don’t mind it at all,” the manager said. “It’s not my club, it’s a club which belongs to Mohamed Al Fayed. When I was at Inter, before and after the game Massimo Moratti [the club president] would come into the dressing-room and I think it’s good. The players need to know that they’ve got a chairman who’s 100 per cent behind them.”

Safety is in Fulham’s hands. If they beat Portsmouth on Sunday they are safe, barring a freak result for Reading, and this is in itself something of a miracle. So sure were the Match of the Day team that Fulham could not survive after their defeat by Liverpool two weeks ago that they did not put together a graphic of the team’s run-in. “I’ve got to say, three or four weeks ago our chances of survival looked slim,” Hodgson said. “But we haven’t lost faith in ourselves and we’ve always felt we could do what we’ve done. I don’t blame other people for not sharing that belief because logically we looked like we were down.”

While Fulham played with energy and purpose, Birmingham were subdued and contributed to their own downfall, failing to mark Brian McBride for his headed goal and giving Erik Nevland space for his strike.

Alex McLeish, the Birmingham manager, appeared to blame his players’ nerves. His team have failed to draw strength from their fine performances against the bigger clubs.

“I said the evidence was there for them because of those results,” McLeish said. “They should believe; they’re entitled to believe but it’s the frailties of the human mind, and we’ll keep working on that side of things.”

Birmingham need to beat Blackburn Rovers at home and hope that Reading stumble away to Derby County and Fulham come unstuck away to Portsmouth. “We’ve got to take it as it comes because this is the way it’s panned out,” McLeish said. “You have to accept whatever is there in front of you. If Portsmouth choose to play a reserve team [against Fulham] then that’s Harry Redknapp’s prerogative. I don’t think we would like it. But Portsmouth are perfectly capable of winning that game. And we are perfectly capable of winning our home game against Blackburn.”

“I relish and embrace the week to come,” Hodgson said. “Then I’ll brace myself for next Sunday night, that might be a great night like this one or it might be a sad night and I will have to brace myself for both possibilities.”

How they rated

Fulham (4-4-2): K Keller 6 P Stalteri Y 6 A Hughes 7 B Hangeland 7 P Konchesky 6 S Davies Y 6 J Bullard 7 D Murphy 6 C Dempsey 6 B McBride 7 D Kamara 6 Substitutes: E Nevland 7 (for Kamara, 68min), L Andreasen (for Bullard, 88), D Healy (for Dempsey, 90). Not used: A Warner, C Bocanegra. Next: Portsmouth (a).

Birmingham (4-4-2): M Taylor 6 S Kelly 7 R Jaidi Y 4 L Ridgewell 5 D Murphy 5 S Larsson 4 F Muamba Y 4 D Johnson 4 O Kapo 4 J McFadden Y 5 M Forssell 4 Substitutes: F Queudrue Y 4 (for Ridgewell, 46min), M Zarate 4 (for Kapo, 59), C Jerome Y (for Forssell, 74). Not used: C Doyle, S Parnaby. Next: Blackburn Rovers (h).

Referee: C Foy
Attendance: 25,308